Why Get Well When You Can Live the High Life?
August 21st, 2009Hospitals Outdo Resorts
I decided to Google “wee-weed up” to see if anyone had ever said it before Barack Obama, and I can’t find any examples. Maybe it’s a Kenyan expression. I think “wee-weed up” is a good way to describe the way Obama reacts whenever anyone has the guts and integrity to call him on his nonsense. Dictators get “wee-weed up” a lot. It’s one of their defining traits. Something to think about. Stalin used to get “wee-weed up” and have people shot in the back of the head.
I don’t think Obama is going to be the great and powerful secular leader he wants to be. He’ll never be our Castro. He’s too inept and childish, and it looks like health care is going to knock the wheels off the shiny tricycle which is his ego. Hillary got impaled on the same prideful stake, and then Obama took Hillary down, and now he’s finding out he’s no smarter than she was. Obama is starting to fade, and that’s great for America, but he is probably a taste of leaders to come. In the long run, our economy is going to continue to slide, and we are going to continue reacting like spoiled brats who can’t face second-tier status, and we will listen to any fool who says he can turn it around. Then we’ll give up our privacy, our property rights, our independence, and our dignity. I really believe this is our future. When the ancient Jews acted up, God allowed another nation to take them captive. He won’t need to do that to us. We’ll take ourselves captive.
I hope I’m right about Obama’s arrogance and stubbornness. So far, he has never let us down. I hope he rides the USS Single-Payer right to the bottom of the popularity polls. If not, he’ll eventually find some other career-ending position to which he will cling. Or he’ll cling to so many small errors, they’ll add up and sink him.
I was supposed to drive my sister to chemo today, but she didn’t take her nausea prescriptions at the right time, so she can’t stand to be moved. When they kick in, we’ll be on our way. I don’t know when that will be.
I keep marveling at the inexplicable spending I witnessed yesterday. I can’t recall the last time I had my blood pressure and pulse checked, but I’m pretty sure they used a stethoscope, sphygmomanometer, and wristwatch. UM/Sylvester uses digital machines on wheels. I’ll bet each one costs $1500. Let me check. Okay, I just found something similar online for about $2900. Whee. This is the kind of thing that happens when you want “the best medical care in the world.” A regular sphygmomanometer runs about twenty bucks.
The chemo room was really something They had cubicles roughly ten feet on a side. Each one had a big recliner and a TV cabinet with a DVD player. I wonder…would the care be less effective if they had a big open room with recliners, chairs, and TVs? If I wanted to have a cubicle of my own, it would probably cost ten grand to build. I believe some hospitals still have open rooms without fancy cubicles. Do they adversely affect the health of patients? Doubtful.
If you want to see where your money goes when you’re in the hospital, raise a fuss next time. Scream that the tea is too hot, or that you hate the curtains. They will send you a person whose job is to sweet-talk unreasonable patients. It doesn’t matter if you’re crazy. It doesn’t matter who’s right. They will appear and hold your hand and say they love you, while you disgrace yourself in front of patients who are more mature.
I’ll bet these people pull down $75K a year, plus benefits. I don’t know if they’re a tort-law side effect, or the result of the free spending insurance always creates, or a product of liberal happy-happy feelgood medical philosophy, or what. Part of every hospital bill goes to pay them.
We don’t seem to be able to draw a line between giving the best care and spoiling the sick. These are two different things. Spending a pile of money on the best drug available makes sense. Splurging on luxuries which aren’t very helpful seems foolish. I doubt that it’s wise to reward sick people for being passive and whiny. There is such a thing as not wanting to get better. We have a funny habit of rewarding and praising people for being ill; that may look like compassion, but it’s not. We do it in order to feel saintly, and to shut patients up. It’s not for the sick. It’s selfish.
If we really cared about the poor, wouldn’t we steer funding away from frills and frippery? Wouldn’t we be able to apply that money to care for the indigent? Nobody wants reusable needles or dirty sheets, but we’re a long way from that. If you go to a luxury hotel in Vegas, they don’t treat you nearly as well. And kissing your rear end is the primary function of a hotel employee.
She just called. I’m off to the hospital again.
August 21st, 2009 at 11:24 AM
An interesting post, I marvel when I have the mis fortune to visit a hospital at the technological advances that I see at the facility that are used to treat me. I never think of the expense of those items I enjoy that are being employed to care for me. I understand your point though, certainly the 20 dollar blood pressure device is adequate when compared to the 2900 electronic one, this does not go away with universal health care by the way. Indeed it increases. I do marvel at the inexplicable waste in many other facets of the health care system.
Unfortunately your experience of ass-kissery is at the other end of the scale once compared to the absolute silence one must adhere to; in particularly the hopital I have attended here at home in Canada. The care is exemplary once care is being administered, but you must get to that point after much waiting and waiting in pain and discomfort which continues unabated or must increase to get to the care. Once you get to the care one is then not allowed to complain or question too loudly in any fashion about any thing, at the risk of offense or perceived bad behaviour, as this is forbidden. Foul language and abusive behaviour should never be tolerated, and is prominently displayed around all health facilities here at home, it is true abuse should not be tolerated, but complaints of care or concerns surrounding the care about loved ones or oneself should not be considered abusive when those aspects surrounding someone who is in pain or suffering from a cancer that has taken them over is of paramount concern to the patient.
There seems to little middle ground I find. So long as a patient goes along to get along all is fine, express concern or raise a complaint and you find out quick what delay or being ignored is and indeed the care deteriorates unless you shut up.
Everyone in Canada has stories regarding health care good and bad regarding our health services, obviously I do too, we have received good care once it was determined care was to be given, but the suffering and pain that has been endured to get to those points has been beyond the pale. When health care is a commodity it is scarce like any other and it is regulated and it is rationed. It is all I have though and if Obama has his way, in time it will be all Americans have, there will be many who will defend it and the process to the bitter end and there will be many like me who will rail against it and thus will it ever remain. Costs will increase so will wait times and access to quality health care will be diminished.
But it’s free aparantly so thats good.
August 21st, 2009 at 12:02 PM
Let’s quit saying “free,” since it’s incorrect. Let’s say “paid for with money confiscated from other people.”
August 21st, 2009 at 12:38 PM
1. Kissing rear end is the function of every one in the retail trade.
2. Whether it’s a trader in a souk howling about bread from the mouths of his children as you leave his tent or the super sophisticated seller who turns it so he’s doing you a favor, comes down to getting the buyer to the table.
3. After a military career, was poorly equipped to do much besides give orders.
4. As time has passed, have become more willing and more capable at making the request: ” please buy what I have for sale.”
5. Have kids working for me that do this without a thought. Some of them earn more money than I do and are worth their salary and commissions.
6. In a technical field, proficiency is one selling point. Closing usually involves kissing butt in some form, though.
7. Used to deplore that. Now I accept it.
V/R JWest
August 21st, 2009 at 1:24 PM
I said “free” fully tongue in cheek, I should have included a “sarc” tag it is a however a moniker “Friends of Medicare” or other supporters of taxpayer funded health care like to throw out there. It most certainly isn’t free. 100% agreed.
August 21st, 2009 at 2:46 PM
+1 for spelling sphygmomanometer correctly. I can barely say sphygmomanometer without hurting myself.
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RE: kissing ass, or customer relations 101. Being nice to jerks is the price WE pay for their money. There is always a price.
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:05 AM
I think it’s gang–slang for smoking pot, like 4:20 and such. “We Weed Up!”
Hardly a role model.
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:56 AM
Americans are too soft/pampered. We no longer appreciate the mere ‘good’ or ‘fine’ or ‘OK’ because we are spiled and have a sense of entitlement. he rest follows in an OPM scenario like healthcare. Be it insurance or Obamacare, medicine is too much an OPM game.
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:17 PM
Panama has a form of socialized medicine. It covers everyone who works plus pregnant mothers and children. Every working person has a certain percentage of their salary taken by the government and each employer has to contribute a percentage above that. Doctors have to contribute so much time to treating these patients and they are paid a grand sum of 2000 USD monthly for thier services.
I had heart surgery done four years ago. (You might remember a period of about six months when I was not commenting he he). I was sent into Panama City to the main hospital which deals with that particular problem. Commonly called the “Especializada”, but by most people referred to as “el carniceria” (the butcher shop). It happened to be during a period when a number of folks were on strike including the janitorial staff of the hospital. So, the place was none too clean, but the patient care was tolerably decent for a public hospital with horribly underpaid staff who cannot be fired. That means that those times I had chest pain in the night I usually had to throw something heavy and loud out into the hallway to wake them up so they would come and attend to me.
I spent a total of four months in hospital. Mostly due to the strike but partly because of a complication with the surgery as well. My surgeon was the same Dr. who had operated on one of Panama’s ex-presidents. So all in all the quality of professional care was pretty good. Some of the other things were a little touch and go.
There were no televisions and I spent two and a half months in an open ward with six other heart patients either waiting for surgery or after surgery waiting to see if they lived long enough to be discharged to go home. I finally achieved the latter. During that time, to while away the hours I worked every problem in an old algebra book while listening to a Panamanian radio station through headphones. I now have trouble sleeping if I don’t wear headphones at night while thinking over some mathematical problem.