PCApostate: American Health Care is a Happy Meal [Part I]

[Guest guest]

Some foul language in the essay, but if you can deal with that- some

interesting thoughts.

Other comments?

Misty L. Trepke

http://health./

 

American Health Care is a Happy Meal [Part I]

http://pcapostate.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-health-care-is-happy-

meal-part.html

 

 

By Curt Maynard

Have you ever wondered why is it that American children love the

McDonald's Happy Meal so much? After all the food inside is no

different than what can be ordered right off the menu, hamburger,

chicken nuggets, drink and fries. Is it the toy perhaps? The

aesthetically pleasing, brightly colored bag?

 

Personally, I think it's a bit of both, don't children just love the

idea of a free surprise inside anything. I mean think about it,

isn't the advertising strategy associated with sugary cereals

exactly the same, a toy inside a brightly colored box with friendly

cartoon characters on the exterior?

 

Kids already know what to expect, by the time the average American

child is eight they've undoubtedly consumed hundreds of happy meals,

yet they still go for it each and every time their parents enter the

McDonald's drive through. Surely, the mystery must be gone, they

must know how the burger or nuggets will taste. I'm not really all

that convinced that the toy itself is very important to most

children, what I've witnessed with my own eyes is that the toy is

generally destroyed, discarded and forgotten by the time the child

gets back home. The brightly colored, aesthetically pleasing bag

can't be the most important highlight of the meal either, as a rule

kids don't bother reading whatever frivolous messages are written on

it - they may take a crayon and complete a maze or something like

that, but in the end, after the food has been consumed, the bag is

tossed along with the remnants of the meal.

 

Taking all the above into consideration I am left wondering if it

isn't the overall " presentation, " I.e. the meal, bag and toy

together that ensure the child will consistently order and then

reorder the same old crap, and that's what it really is isn't it,

crap? If you, the reader are under the impression that a McDonald's

Happy Meal is a wholesome and nutritious choice for your child's

palate, then there really isn't any reason you should continue

reading this particular piece, stop reading it, and go back to your

MTV and videogames. If there is a member of the opposite sex that'll

have sex with you, please use a condom.

 

So then, how does the Happy Meal relate to modern American health

care? Well, I'm glad you asked, and I'll be happy to share my

opinion with you, but first, allow me a caveat. This essay is bound

to irritate, annoy, and probably alienate many people. Most readers

will agree with most of the ideas set forth, but in all likelihood,

most readers will also be angered by some element, and it'll be that

one issue, that will violate some sacred cow or another and will

cause most readers to reject everything within. If you are one of

the few truly objective people left out there, this essay was

written for you, and in truth, it is only people like you that are

likely to understand the greater meaning of this article and its

purpose, which of course is change.

 

Am I advocating socialized medicine? Ha, hardly, the government

can't do anything right, why would they be able to manage health

care any better and/or more honestly that they manage foreign and

domestic policy, wars and occupations, legislation and law

enforcement? The truth is, the entire health care system is

irreparably broken and will never be fixed until it is allowed to

collapse first. I could tell you how it could be successfully

reconstructed after its demise, but the reader would find the

answers so distasteful that 99% of all them would reject these

recommendations out of hand. Thus it is far easier, to allow the

inevitable collapse to happen, and then realistically repair it

afterwards, and that is the key word, realistically. Today, the

American health care system is a Happy Meal, and people aren't

willing to forgo their toy and brightly colored bag for more

nutritious food.

 

The point in writing this essay isn't to offer any solutions to the

disaster that the American health care system has become, it's to

point out how Americans have inexorably come to accept the corporate

involvement in their health care, which by the way is manifestly

insane, in that even the dimmest bulbs today know fully well that

corporations don't care about people, only the bottom line, profit.

 

The vast majority of Americans, and probably people worldwide are

under the impression that medicine today is better than it was fifty

years ago. In some respects this is true, but in others it is

abysmally incorrect. Here is one example - a country doctor fifty

years ago could listen to his patients lungs and immediately

diagnose pneumonia, he didn't require x-rays, blood tests, arterial

blood gasses, a pulmonologist's second opinion, or a consult from an

infection control specialist. One shot of penicillin would clear the

whole thing up, the patient was back to work in three days and the

doctor received reasonable compensation. In the 1970s severe cases

of pneumonia generally didn't require more than three days on an

intravenous antibiotic, and thus three days in hospital, and then 7-

11 additional days on an oral antibiotic at home. Today, a severe

case of pneumonia is most likely to require 10 -14 days on a variety

of different IV antibiotics, some of them quite toxic, a half dozen

chest x-rays, multiple arterial blood gasses and dozens of other lab

tests involving blood. In all likelihood the patient will receive at

least one CT scan or MRI at between $1000 and $3,800 a pop and if

their elderly, a week or two on a rehab unit where they'll receive

physical and occupational therapy until they're able to transfer

safely from their bed to a bedside commode.

 

How did this happen? It's simple really, because of the abuse of

antibiotics and believe it or not, unrestricted immigration, which

has allowed people with Third World infections to come into this

country and be given medical treatment in our hospitals, nosocomial

[hospital acquired] infections have skyrocketed. Hospitals are a

perfect breeding ground for the continuation of these infections and

provide an excellent place for the infections to mutate into more

virulent forms. If patient A has a relatively nasty respiratory

infection and Patient B is elderly and immuno-compromised, and the

respiratory therapist taking care of them both has been coughed on

by Patient A, there is a small possibility that the RT will carry

that bacterium into Patient B's room and expose the immuno-

compromised Patient B to it. Patient B then develops the infection,

but it then mutates because Patient B's immune system isn't as

strong as Patient A's and an entirely new version of the same

infection can arise, requiring different antibiotics to treat. This

is old hat, few people are unaware of these facts today, but what

they may be unaware of is that the simple use of deductive logic

demand that if this is true, and it is, the longer someone stays in

a hospital the more likely they are to acquire one of these

resistant bacterial infections, which should convince even the

greatest adherent to the virtues of modern medicine, that staying in

a hospital for more than a few days is a very bad idea. Now I've

pissed off all of the respiratory therapists reading this essay,

they're outraged, their tender feewings have been hurt, but

nonetheless what I've written is true. All hospitals are required to

train their medical staff to properly wash their hands and to follow

basic rules that reduce the likelihood of cross contamination, but

nonetheless, statistically, with the hundreds of thousands of

doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, X-ray technicians,

phlebotomists, volunteers, etc… hundreds, if not thousands of people

are infected every single day in this country with an infection they

did not have the day before. By the way, doctors are the worst

offenders, ask any nurse. See! I told you. Now I've pissed off the

doctors too.

 

In any case, how does this all relate to a Happy Meal? Well, a Happy

Meal is essentially nothing but a hamburger, fries and a drink, but

because it comes in a brightly packaged bag and has the promise of a

toy inside, children absolutely love them. Adults too apparently

haven't outgrown their childish need for a toy and brightly packaged

bag of crap either, as that is in effect what your health care is

today - crap in a brightly colored bag with the promise of a

forthcoming toy within.

 

We'll explore the inherent problems with America's health care

system in the next few essays I write over the next month, but today

we'll focus on something that most people don't even consider, and

that is the consumer's [YOU] unrealistic expectations.

First off, you have allowed your health care system to be hijacked

by corporations. Even the average deluded fool understands that a

corporations bottom line is the dollar, yet you still have faith in

corporate medicine - why? In truth you know better, but you're in a

state of denial that really knows no bounds.

 

Every time you turn on and watch the idiot box [television] it

soothes you into a false sense of security, many of its programs

revolve around medicine in some manner, whether it be about doctors,

nurses, the emergency room, surgery, or whatever, you're there with

your popcorn and that same stupid look on your face, the avid

viewer, the fan. The fact that its all a giant bag of shit never

occurs to you, you like that handsome young doctor, and that's all

there is to it. It's a fraud wake up! In any case, these programs

help make you feel secure about your health care system, you always

see the doctors find a cure, they have every single technological

toy at their disposal - all that's needed is just a doctors order

and everything will be okay. You can't imagine as you sit there rapt

up in the program, that often there is nothing that can really be

done for certain medical conditions - or even that occasionally,

nothing should be done, that just doesn`t compute, does it? These

television docudramas never cover stories like that of a woman that

entered the hospital for a simple surgery and left with no arms and

legs or how two physicians involved in a medical case think that the

other is monitoring the patient only to find that neither was

monitoring blood levels of the patient who was receiving a nephro-

toxic antibiotic and as a result the patients kidneys were destroyed

because of their indifference or negligence. Hey - I guarantee you

this happens all the time.

 

Want me to tell you a little secret? When you work for a corporation

and you see things like this happen, you never tell. Nope, that's

right, you never say a damn thing, because you need your job in

order to keep yourself out of bankruptcy from all that worthless

materialistic crap you purchased over the last several years to

entertain your pathetic self with. Want to know another secret? The

corporations ain't gonna tell either - nope - that's called a

liability and corporations will cover them up quick.

 

How does this work in health care. Let me provide a theoretical

example.

Let's say that a patient is receiving an antibiotic called

Vancomycin. Vancomycin is a last line antibiotic, if it can't kill

your bacterial infection, you're screwed. It's an incredibly

effective antibiotic, but it causes kidney damage if blood levels

aren't closely monitored. Here's the situation. A doctor orders the

antibiotic, but he subsequently transfers his patient to a sub acute

setting, where he isn't obligated by law to see them on a daily

basis. Well, doctors are human you know and he forgets about his

patient. Since his patient is on a sub acute floor, the nurses

aren't of the same caliber as those on an acute medical unit and

they don't call the doctor to remind him to check his patients blood

levels, which by the way, is ultimately his responsibility anyway,

not the nurses. Time goes on and eventually the doctor remembers

that he has a patient, then he remembers with dread, that his

patient has been receiving Vancomycin for several weeks. He checks

the blood levels and finds that he has destroyed the patients

kidneys.

 

Well reader, what do you suppose he does then? Does he report

himself? Does he confess his error to the hospitals administrative

branch or does he discharge the patient home and never tell them?

What happens if the hospitals administrative branch finds out? Do

you really think they'll inform the patient? Do you think they'll

report themselves and open the facility up to a lawsuit? If you do,

you're a fool. Nope, everybody just pretends it never happened and

when the patient reports to the doctor weeks later with complaints

of jaundice and associated maladies, wouldn't you know that he/she

must have been exposed at some point after discharge to a malicious

virus.

 

You should know better by now - you've seen how the corporations are

screwing America and anyone and everyone in it. Why is it that you

think they wouldn't screw you too? Is it the " Happy Meal, " was it

the aesthetically pleasing private hospital room they provided you

with, was it the bells and whistles and buzzers and lights

associated with all that high tech garbage the toted you to and

from? Was it the " professionalism " of the hospital staff [They are

trained to placate you with apologies and smiles, not with

individual attention, that costs too much].

 

You should know better by now than to expect much from a

corporation - and that is what your health care system

is, " Corporate Medicine. "

 

If the above frightened you at all. Congratulations, you're not

completely deluded and/or asleep at the wheel.