Subject: txt hcare -
We can criticize socialized health care, citing statistics and chronicling the historical record of runaway costs and deterioration of quality. But you have to deal directly with Medicare and Medicaid (or perhaps be a former Soviet citizen) to really appreciate the Twilight Zone nature of government-run programs.
Among federal Medicare regulations -- which are over 130,000 pages long -- there is more than ample room for confusion and some [gallows] humor. After a long search for traction weights (those five pound blocks of metal used to pull fractures out to length) I found them propping open doors to patient rooms in the ER.
It is a punishable offense under Medicare regs if the hospital is caught propping open these doors because they are fire doors.
In 30 years, I have never seen nor heard of a significant hospital fire. However, patients suffer every day by being inadequately monitored. Keeping these “fire” doors closed means the nurse sitting at her desk outside the rooms cannot visually monitor the patients. But, to comply with regulations, all those little rubber doorstops were thrown out.
Fortunately, given a choice between poor patient care and ignoring a government mandate, most nurses care more about the patient than about the wishes of a bureaucrat in Washington. Ergo, the nurses commandeered the orthopaedic traction weights. In case of a pop inspection, traction weights at least provide plausible deniability... [snip]
These are not isolated incidents, but emblematic of a daily clinic in Medicare Absurdistan.
A psychiatrist once told me that we need three things to remain sane -- the ability to deflect criticism, the ability to laugh at oneself, and the ability to accept the absurd.
Until it kills us, government run medicine should provide no end of practice...
[We've been warned.]
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