jabmyeyes.com

What angers me is the minds that sit around figuring out ways to make money off of our misfortunes.  There are boardrooms full of people trying to figure out how to pocket some cash.  I call them clipboard carriers.  Administrators are rewarded for making money rather than  for providing amazing results for the health of a community.  I worked with an occupational therapist who was so inspiring to me and others as we watched her bring smiles to the depressed and life to those ready to give up.  She was let go because she didn’t generate enough income for the little rural hospital.  Hospitals are not factories.  They don’t have assembly lines.  Hospitals are full of real people with real problems and sometimes fixing those problems just doesn’t make anyone any money.

Dr. William D. wrote a blog that made me think,  then again maybe they are factories?…

“. . . the life of the pig has moved out of view; when’s the last time you saw a pig in person? Meat comes from the grocery store, where it is cut and packaged to look as little like parts of animals as possible. The disappearance of animals from our lives has opened a space in which there’s no reality check on the sentiment or the brutality. . .”

The same disconnect has occurred in healthcare for the heart. The emotional distance thrust between the hospital-employed primary care physician, the procedure-driven cardiologist, the crammed-into-a-niche electrophysiologist (heart rhythm specialist) or cardiothoracic surgeon whose principal concerns are procedures—with an eye always towards litigation risk—mimics factory farms that now litter the landscape of the Midwest. The hospitals and doctors who deliver the process see us less as human beings and more as the next profit opportunity.

The “factory hospital” has allowed the subjugation of humans into the service of procedural volume, all in the name of fattening revenues. Never mind that people are not (usually) killed outright but subjected to a succession of life-disrupting procedures over many years. But whether livestock in a factory farm or humans in a factory hospital, the net result to the people controlling the process is identical: increased profits.

The system doesn’t grow to meet market demand, but to grow profits. The myth that allows this growth is perpetuated by the participants who stand to gain from that growth.

See hospitals for what they are: businesses. Despite most hospitals retaining “Saint” in their name, there is no longer anything saintly or charitable about these commercial operations. They are every bit as profit-seeking as GE, Enron, or Mobil.

http://www.wellsphere.com/heart-health-article/factory-hospitals/472314

I think most of us really do care about people and their individual health.  We just need to care less about profits.

I read about the folks who are against healthcare reform they seem to belong to the same pile of people who are against cleaning up the environment.  The common denominator seems to be they don’t like the costs of these humanitarian interventions.  Talk about jab my eyes out!  Is it that they figure some people and places are just expendable?  They are poor and uneducated and someone has to clean up our mistakes and make our chemicals.  Look at these pictures from China.  This would seem to exemplify the cost of not caring.

So when you are shopping for a toy for your favorite tot and you notice that it was made in China.  Remember this picture of plastic factory waste going in to what was once a beautiful river.

Next time you buy an Iphone, computer or various other electronics and some jewelry remember this titanium plant.

Without rules a nations people are allowed to suffer.  Without activism the suffering continues.  Our country allows activism and yet some refer to those activists as socialists.  I don’t get it.

Don’t blame this horridness on the people of China.  Just like here there are good people trying to do good things to advocate for the health and happiness of all people.  Not just those who can afford good health and happiness.  Please see the entire article and all the photos at

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

Tim Gummer says:

If it wasn’t already obvious, then it is surely clear here that our Stuff is made in a Mordor of this very earth, by a people in slavery. In a globalized world, our complicity in their deaths and suffering is no less than those who stood by in the towns of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. These workers’ horrors may be marginally less, but unlike the deathcamps’ neighbours, we cannot pretend we have not seen.

It has been about a month since I originally posted Hospitals are not factories.  I wanted to add a post I read from The Weekly Updates.

…we have all of the NEGATIVE effects of “socialized” health care without actually having equal health care for all. Arguments against socialized health care, include the people not wanting the few to pay for the masses. But that is exactly what’s happening here.

I work 2 jobs, pay my taxes, barely make enough to keep a roof over my head and food on the plates of my family, do not get such luxuries. An ER visit typically runs me $2,000+, which I must pay or else what’s left of credit will disappear. I cannot afford health care, and with the economy today, my employers do not offer me any benefits as they won’t let me work full-time. This HAS to change.

http://www.theweeklyupdates.com/our-life/orange-county-medical-service-flawed/

This is an example of a hardworking American taxpayer who is having to go without, due to the current healthcare system.  Not to repeat myself, but, it isn’t a system.  It is a big pile of crap and when you stir up crap you realize how much it stinks.

Now — Let me share with you this exchange I had recently with a young man I know.  He is usually witty and makes funky videos so I sent him Barack Obama’s video challenge.  His response and that of his friend throws off the hope for change.  These boys are in college, so, don’t think they are uneducated knobs.

Also, Whenever you try to talk reasonably about healthcare reform it is easy to find the opposition–>they are the ones  pounding their fists on the table or resorting to foulness.

WHE

Yes please expand the government so I can lose even more freedom.

September 27 at 3:17am

NHA

hmm. while those celebrity judges are busy smelling their own asses and picking their favorite sob story maybe i should make an advertisement full of the real people who want universal health care… not the ones hand picked by the people selling this bullshit to us.

Me

If you are attending a university or college then you are involved in government funded education. What freedom is healthcare reform going to take from you?

September 28 at 12:16pm

WHE

Great idea, let’s make a video of a bunch of people who are really lazy and don’t want to have to work hard for their healthcare.  My parents and I were taxed to support this school, if taxes would have been lowered I’m sure I could have afforded to go to a better university.

September 29 at 3:18pm

Me

not everyone who gets sick is lazy.

September 29 at 3:58pm

NHA

Im simply saying that personally I’ve noticed that people in favor of universal health care are largely behind it for personal gain when they could be acting in the best interest of our country. I don’t think that all sick people are lazy. But i do believe that many illnesses (not all) are a result of the behavior one engages in. smoking causes lung cancer. Failure to wear a seat belt can cause an injury. Drinking to excess and walking down stairs may lead to broken bones. These are reasons why some people need insurance in the first place and I don’t think that our society as a whole should be forced to pay for the mistakes of a few. It doesn’t seem progressive to me. More like a ball and chain.

September 29 at 9:18pm

Me

I know a good man, self employed, no insurance, who drinks plenty of water and lives a good life providing for his family he had a massive stroke. I know a boy, who worked hard. who lived a good life and got knocked off his motorcycle on a freeway on the way home from work –>brain injury. I know a waitress, single, works three jobs, got a kidney stone requiring surgery –>debilitated her finances. All of us can have anything happen at anytime. It is the brothers keeper thing — not personal gain

September 29 at 9:33pm

WHE

Everyone get’s sick, but I don’t care if they die or not, (What?!) have you ever tried anal sex? (What?! again) Because people who smoke, eat fast foods, have buttsecks, and live otherwise dangerous lifestyles are going to benefit from this plan more than me. All I know is that socialized medicine bankrupts every country or state that enacts it.  (our country is so financially stable with our current healthcare eh?)

September 29 at 11:14pm

Me

Ok I’ll go away now

September 30 at 7:57am

NHA

It’s good to discuss these things when we’re all on the same page.

September 30 at 7:54pm

Just an example of the oppositions mind.  I wasn’t sure how to contest any further. By the way, How do you get in to college without knowing how to spell buttsex?  And, what page are they on?

http://www.blackcommentator.com/cartoons.html

Here is a good page to go to

http://factsaboutreform.org/myth.html