Friday, October 22, 2010

Introduction to Nora's Blog

This blog is designed to be informative, educational, and thought provoking.  The goal is to encourage honest intellectual exchange that hopefully will enhance knowledge and growth for all participants.  This blog will similarly discourage and delete incivility, which fosters degradation, and perpetuates ignorance.

This platform champions the rights of those who cannot afford lifesaving health care at current exorbitant prices which only the most underprivileged are forced to pay.  This platform will also challenge the inaccessibility of our healthcare system to the working poor and disenfranchised families.  This is my podium and readers are forewarned of my biases toward unconscionably profit-driven establishments such as hospitals and health care insurance companies.  Let’s begin with hospitals.

Medical Necessity versus Fiscal Necessity:

Hospitals are schizoid institutions partly composed of devoted and educated personnel who are dedicated to curing human illness and injury and saving lives.  Hospitals are composed of ‘other’ departments that exist to ensure institutional financial survival as all businesses must.  The last 50 years have demonstrated a mutation in financial theory that altered the concept of fiscal necessity required to maintain a healthy continuum, and morphed it into greed mongering…huge profits at any expense to be borne by others.

How can this happen?  Hospitals enjoy a climate of zero competition.  In what other universe are consumers forced to agree in advance, in exchange for services and products rendered, to pay an unknown amount of money?

Hospitals compete with each other for market share, but patients (the market share) are clueless about the charges that will be levied by the nearest local hospital or any other hospital for that matter.

When the life of a loved one is at stake, who would even think about the charge?  There is a concept called “undue influence” which is defined as taking a grossly oppressive and unfair advantage of another’s necessities or distress.   Are hospitals guilty of this?
Let’s see how this plays out in blog 2 --- EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT EMERGENCY ROOMS… *BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK!