Wednesday, September 23, 2009

How I Spent Last Monday Morning………

I had to attend the HCAHPS training at work.

Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems.

Commonly referred to as the Hiccups Class, this little jewel is only a taste of the bureaucratic nightmare universal healthcare promises to bring us.

Let’s say you live in the projects. You don’t have a job and obviously don’t have health insurance. You live on the green welfare check and food stamps and buy whatever drugs you can afford with what you get breaking into houses at night.

You develop chest pain and call 911 on your new $300.00 iPhone.

You are rushed to the hospital in an ambulance with advanced life support and are treated at the hospital. After thousands of dollars of lab tests, x-rays, ct scans and IV therapy you spend a few days admitted for observation. Then you are released with a handful of expensive prescriptions and detailed instructions on how you should eat and change some of your lifestyles so you can live a healthier life.

You were abusive and foul mouthed to the staff of the hospital. You were combative and cussed out the doctors and nurses during your entire stay. At times you were violent and even spat on your health care providers. You even accused them of not caring for you properly because of your skin color.

Two weeks go by and you get a call from someone from the government asking you questions about your hospitalization. You told him/her how horrible your care was and that you felt you were not treated correctly. The food wasn’t delivered on time and they had the nerve to wake you up to draw blood or give you your medications at night. He thanks you and hangs up.

Since you are jobless and on relief your Medicaid benefits would cover all the procedures.

Wrong! You answers to that survey show you had a “Patient Complaint” and the government, the one everyone else’s taxes pay for, refuses to pay the bill. The hospital, doctors, nurses and everyone else that used their years of training and highly specialized skills to save your worthless life and put up with your childish shit for three days gets nothing. Repeat NOTHING.

What, you have a job, pay your bills and taxes, live in a nice house you work hard for, and are a decent and upstanding citizen in your community? You have heath insurance from work or privately purchased and gladly make the co-payments for the finest health care system in the world?

You’re screwed. You have to pay your bills. You may get a chance to answer this survey, but you still have to pay. Only the lowest members of the societal food chain, the worst of the scumbags get this kind of world class customer service in this Brave New America. Hell, you can be arrested for pirating cable in this country. It’s called Theft of Service. But you can complain your way out of thousands of dollars of hospital bills by being an asshole? While everyone who works hard and is responsible has to pay for it?

OK, I am posting about what goes on in my industry here, a major taboo. I know this isn’t a smart topic to tackle but someone’s gotta say it and it might as well be me. Besides if they terminate my employment I just might have a shot at some of this free healthcare myself.

I hope I live long enough to see how this horror movie ends………..