Put the Lime in the Coconut

I’ve been spending time using the medical field and all their fun toys lately. There are a lot of scary looking machines. There is lots of poking and prodding in embarrassing places by people who you don’t know who are of a gender that you’d rather not have poke and prod there. Not that the other gender makes it any better these days, but that’s a bigoted statement now, so I didn’t say it. They can put a man or woman in a space station but still haven’t found the back for those silly gowns they make you wear.

It seems it’s the doctor’s job to shake your hand and say everything is fine as long as you have money. If you don’t have money you are on death’s door, but you’ll need a different specialist at a different hospital it seems. There are those who would argue that is wrong. That somewhere there’s a constitutional right to medical care. There isn’t, but there should be. Being a person who is healthy should not be the privilege of the wealthy only.

Having said that, what makes us think the government can provide that? Think in terms of the bank bailout. Think about Social Security. Think about Obama signing off on whether you have the right to have your tonsils removed or not. Why not? He’s now in the business of giving stock advice…Praise Obama…

But I really don’t want to think about that right now. Nothing I say will matter anyway. I like the nurses. They are nice and tell you things. The doctors spend 2 minutes with you and you are supposed to be enthused about their presence. They don’t care about you. To tell the truth neither does the nurse. The difference is the nurses have to deal with the fall out if you the patient are unhappy so they try to be nice.

What’s amazing to me is how you can rack up a bill the whole time you are having such a lovely time joking around with the nurse. The finance department doesn’t joke. They are just mean. Have you ever wondered how if you pay for the hospital stay, why you get a bill from every doctor who ever poked their head in the room? And every procedure creates a new bill by different doctors and different labs? I had a procedure once where I had one doctor who did the procedure, there were three other technician/doctors in the room at one point or another to adjust the temperature, or straighten the blankets or something. They got to charge as much as the guy who did the work. I don’t get it.

Manny Ramirez gets some big bucks, but does the bat boy charge him for services rendered? Or that kid who wipes up the floor at NBA games, does he get to charge per swipe? Or the guy who does your dishes at the restaurant, does he send a bill per utensil? Somehow hospitals and medical care live in a different world than the rest of us.

You know that’s true too when you go into the building. There are flowers on the wall, next to pictures on the wall, next to paneling, next to arrows directing you to departments. People in those departments rarely see those on another floor. They have a cafeteria to eat in, so they don’t leave the building for lunch. So they don’t see the real world either. Makes you wonder if they are shipped in from Area 51 where the government breeds them from the alien’s they found in Roswell. Who knows? It could happen.

This much I know is that they’re going to take some stuff out of me and charge me to do it. It’s supposed to make me feel better, but it really won’t. You’d think they’d pay me for the donation of parts. But they really don’t want my parts. So why should I give them to an unappreciative audience? They’re going poke and prod until I do anyway, so what choice do I have? It is for my own good, they say as they empty my bank account. But you see the government is doing that already so the joke’s on them. All they’re going to get is some diseased piece of me and Obama telling them what to do next. Maybe there is some justice in this world.