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Hospitals' criminal conduct
by Herb Ruhs, MD
| June 17, 2008 |
Re Medicine is the modern mob
The only thing I can add to this discussion is that, from the view of a physician (and I am far from the only MD that thinks so), the situation is actually much, much worse than anyone in the lay public can imagine, or the majority of physicians can bring themselves to recognize.
On the surface are these stories of ER rip-offs eerily similar and seemingly ubiquitous (my wife and I, both of us physicians, have been hit twice), but what is little understood is that the virtual immunity of hospitals from investigation (private patient data don't you know) has attracted mob
style management, since there is little or no risk of being caught, much less having to experience consequences (just look at what Senator Frist's family got away with!), and never having to give back the loot, or even say sorry if they do get caught!
In the uncommon event that there is news coverage of criminal activity by hospitals, we are led to believe that they are rare events. Such an episode of organized criminal activity was uncovered a few years ago at a Tenet Healthcare Corp. (Jeb Bush on the board) hospital, Redding Medical Center, in Redding, California. They were discovered to have been encouraging cardiac surgeons to do open heart surgery (probably the most risky surgery anyone will ever have to undergo) on people who did not need it, in order to inflate billings (here's the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE's coverage). The perpetrators should have been tried as
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The provision of medical care in the US has become both a matter of gave physical danger (health care is recognized as one of the top causes of death in the US) and financial disaster.
Medicare, and insurance in general, create the conditions for this sort of phantasmagoric crime wave by being able to use their power to transfer costs away from those they cover to the weakest, the uninsured and underinsured, who now amount to almost half of the population.
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serial murderers, but it just got swept under the rug.
If you had the opportunity to meet some of these gangster hospital administrators under revealing circumstances, as I have, you would have no trouble recognizing them as criminal types. They tend to look, act and sound like a bad movie. Not all hospital administrators are gangsters (maybe I am deluded here), but the system of financing of health care in the US makes it inevitable that health care administration will resemble organized crime.
One could say, "What do you expect of contemporary, all crime all the time, culture." But medicine is a special case, where a failure of justice happens to people at the most extreme point of vulnerability in anyone's life, in excruciating pain, in fear of immanent death, and likely, as I was, to have been disabled by pain medications administered by the very thieves themselves. Short of trafficking in child sex slaves and snuff films of their final moments, I have a hard time thinking of more depraved criminality. But even the market in child sex slaves is miniscule compared to the astronomical amounts of money involved, the number of people forced into bankruptcy (half of bankruptcies due to medical bills) with the loss of homes, retirement accounts, and generally any future hope of financial resuscitation, driven to suicide.
The provision of medical care in the US has become both a matter of gave physical danger (health care is recognized as one of the top causes of death in the US) and financial disaster. Medicare, and insurance in general, create the conditions for this sort of phantasmagoric crime wave by being able to use their power to transfer costs away from those they cover to the weakest, the uninsured and underinsured, who now amount to almost half of the population.
But why blame the criminals? They are just doing what they are encouraged to do by our politicians. The so called "elected" representatives we send to Congress are the real enablers, an essential element of the organized crime world. It amazes me that folks continue to vote for any incumbent under these conditions, much less that we routinely send 95% of them back to lives of crime as our "elected" keepers.
It always seems easier and more polite to not put up a fight and seek to evade or compromise with gangsters. But there is no is no such thing as getting along with gangsters. Give them an inch today and tomorrow they will take you life.
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I must be extra exhausted this afternoon... you're making me cry a little.
This is all so criminal, so stupid and counterproductive of HEALTH, and the solution is so obvious, and so impossible when everyone in power is on the take.
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