Thoughts for Thursday

I went to the meeting about the hospital relocating to my community last night. They provided a rather lavish refreshment spread. I think I was the only one who didn’t eat or drink anything. Shades of Persephone.

I guess I can say that I have seen the future of medicine as the medical community desires it and - it’s time to emigrate. Because the almost $1 billion dollar mortgaged edifice which the CEO proudly told us had paid really, really big bucks to lure just two of what he considers “the best” MDs to this facility is not going to paid for by bake sales in the lobby. No mater who the insurer is, the government through Medicare or private, the American public is going to foot the bill for this bloated giant.

The CEO beamed about their treatments using all the advanced technological bells and whistles. I would have liked to hear about their commitment to help prevent diseases early before their billing department has to go into overdrive and figure out how to charge us for all these diagnostic toys.

He spoke about the fact that you would never see carts wheeled around the hospital; (though many of us, due to his accent, thought he said “corpses” which was the humor highlight of the evening); all rooms would be private; there would be restaurants...... It was obvious they intended to use state-of-the-art price gouging equipment in an atmosphere of sanitized and bowdlerized disease and death.

But on the bright side, for all those concerned that the economy is going over the cliff; have no fear, the medical establishment still sees itself as the shiny, monied star. It will drag us down and our representative government but hey, look at feudalism. Only a very few reaped such fantastic rewards back then but look at all those nifty castles they left.