As is my standard, it takes me a while to find the inspiration to write. End-of-year volume was up, and we had to go set up and provision the Khaleesi Kave the first week of January, which in itself was like a very welcome second honeymoon.
More on that later….
It takes a lot to really rile me up, and that's when I'm at my most creative. There's obviously a backstory to this. I've written for a while about the decline of the healthcare system. In a given pre-COVID year, 85% of Americans did not interact with the system in a substantial way, so most folks didn't have the contextual perspective to really appreciate the metamorphosis….until they really need help. The Covidiocy accelerated the system’s decline in dramatic fashion.
ZOG has had it’s eye on the healthcare system for quite a while. Shrillary brought it to the forefront with the proposed Health Security Act of 1993, which fortunately hit the mud like a mallard whacked by No 4 shot. Lead-free, of course. But this mutt, who's never held an honest job in his life, has been pushing single-payer since he's been breathing
.https://time.com/4939320/bernie-sanders-single-payer-medicare-all-health-care/
Not that there aren't functional free-market alternatives to the maniacal Hillary/Bernie/AOC wet dream. There are, like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. Take an hour when you can and listen to this fella
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/keith-smith-on-free-market-health-care/id135066958?i=1000457112687
He's made it work, in spades (can I still say that without triggering someone?), but there's one big problem. Freedom, and the prosperity it holds for the willing and industrious, is the antithesis of what ZOG, and the WEF in charge of it, want. Control is everything, and doling out goodies to the Free Shit Army solidifies it
They are willing to burn it all down to create their utopia, damn the consequences, or the cost. What's money anyway? Just print more…..
And those numbers are a few years old, before the most recent debasement of the currency, but I digress.
Control is everything to these people. Hospital administrators like to call it “vertical integration”. It basically means everyone under their roof becomes their bitch. In my area, we have two private not-for-profit (yeah, they still use that term with a straight face) tertiary care hospitals, both controlled by out-of-state interests, as conglomerated systems of multiple facilities. It seems to be that the only idea they've had to counter the moves made by government and insurance carriers (more on that later) is to expand their systems, often without ensuring that quality is maintained. Quality, you must understand, is a dead letter nowadays in administrative circles. A non-topic.
The only independent primary care providers remaining here have concierge practices; the remainder are employed by the systems. I have worked with both hospitals. One is well into its vertical integration plan. It has disintegrated a private radiology group having a decades-long history with the hospital, hired its own GI doctors, plans to hire their own oncologists and just ran off the outstanding private Anesthesia group after 61 years of service; they ensured via contract that the hospital’s 25 operating rooms, labor and delivery, emergency department and GI suite always had Anesthesia coverage. The hospital now can cobble together only enough coverage to staff a half-dozen rooms, leaving many surgeons scrambling to find a place to operate. A large neurosurgery group and an orthopedic group have dropped off staff. Through all this, administration remains confident. Wanna know why? They want control. It's their way. And they probably believe more Uncle Sugar money, like the BILLIONS dropped on them during the Covidiocy, is on the way. Loyalty and history, like quality, no longer matter. A meme on WRSA this morning fits this perfectly. Thanks, CA
I haven't included what they're doing to nonphysician staff, but nurses are getting riled up as well over staffing shortages, working conditions and safety. I think this placard during the recent strike by 7000 nurses in the Big Apple puts it succinctly
In the late 1980s and 1990s, the carpetbaggers spied the honeypot and not only did they take a seat at the table, they got Uncle Sugar to sweeten the pot and then started rigging the game.
Do you believe the slope of the curve is ANY different 13 years later? I just got off the phone with a surgeon-turned-attorney who got sick of it and is now going after them (God bless him, the Left excels at Lawfare, give some back to them), and we both agreed that we physicians let this happen. Not because we were incapable of running things, but because we became clinically overwhelmed and the carpetbagging bureaucrats created such an undecipherably Byzantine regulatory maze that even they could barely keep up with it. They've been termiting on it since 1965.
Did you know that Obamacare banned construction of any NEW physician-owned hospitals? Uh huh. It's THEIR game now, and it functions like a crime syndicate, much like the government as a whole. Healthcare long ago stopped being about the patient; it’s about the bureaucracy now. A surgeon friend of mine in Memphis feels like the big insurance companies and government are colluding to collapse the system, leading to single-payer where regional contracts are doled out to the insurance companies, guaranteeing a steady flow of funds from Uncle Sugar’s teats. Think about it. He may be right. No doubt they'll ban the Keith Smiths of the world. Maybe he and I will share a cell at the Graybar Hotel.
You're at war, whether you know it or not. The system is making war on you. Yet another physician friend just had his very frail, elderly mother in the other local private not-for-profit hospital. He's been on staff there for thirty years. His brother is a physician. The hospitalist “caring” for her (part of the planned collapse of healthcare…shift workers easy to control) unexpectedly discharged her on a Saturday NIGHT. No plans had been made to accommodate her needs at home. The physician brother asked to speak with the hospitalist…he was threatened with arrest. Seriously. The physician son on staff got an attorney involved so the discharge was moved to Sunday. They never saw the hospitalist, but did see this sign
I understand the first four. But “verbal harassment” and “failure to respond to staff instructions” can be twisted by anyone into anything. Very Owellian. Like Soviet psychiatry.
It's all going to collapse; the current arrangement is unsustainable. Only we can make it right. Do you have the stomach for it?
Keep preparing, love your family, build your tribe, and Don't Get Sick.
Gesundheitzkrieg
Unbelievable.
What new structures could we develop to get care direct from good doctors to good normal people patients?
Medicine is one of many areas that are being collapsed in a (semi) controlled demolition in order to pave the way for a New Glorious Future.