| |
|
Fri 18 Nov 2022 11:10:52 AM CST For the People? Hardly. 
How do I describe the cancer in the society in which I am trapped? Saturated may be the closest common word. Perhaps there is another more artful way to describe it. The term metastasize is used to describe cancer spreading beyond its point of origin to other parts of the body. In our case it has almost completely invaded every part. The government has been infected from the beginning, and the founders were aware that their creation was imperfect and subject to being corrupted. The famous (apocryphal? ) remark by Benjamin Franklin, whether not "a republic, if you can keep it" was an exact quote, it is accurate. And ironically, often invoked by the left, which does not even regard the Republic as a republic. But almost all are too stupid to appreciate irony. 
But this is not about lawyers exclusively. Perhaps the legal profession was corrupted much earlier than others, millennia or as millenniums ago, whichever you prefer. The rot in the education sector was much slower, and only began to be apparent only in the last two centuries. Or three if you count the present, and believe as some that it was underway in the nineteenth. Certainly it has been there in 'higher education' for as long, but on an industrial scale it has been in the twentieth (obviously Nazi Germany did it, though not for long, and China ane the Soviet Union did for much longer and China continues) that that it has been systematically injected on a large scale into public education. The universities were falling by the 1960s, and aside from financially independent institutions such as Hillsdale College and small private schools (some of those have been corrupted) almost all are irreversibly compromised. And of course the 'news' media and what passes for entertainment today have been gone for a long time. Organized religion has of course been corrupt from the beginning, but today even many smaller churches, due to their membership in organizations representing their denomination, have fallen. And the Medical Industry has been corrupted for a long time. I could be anyone. There certainly plenty of victims of this little pocket of corruption. Unfortunately some of them are dead or even more disabled than me, so I might as well as use my own experience. I was hospitalized with a suspected heart attack. Taken from my office to the local hospital, a reasonably decent facility. I had been there once several years earlier ans spent six days recovering from pneumonia. I probably could have been safely released at five days, but accepted the sixth as caution on the part of the hospital. I was of course aware that padding goes on, as it does in all areas of society at all levels, whether or not it happens in a given situation depends on the inclination of people to do it and the risk of consequences. But the insurance paid for it, and everyone was happy. But this time was different. The hospital was not equipped to perform the necessary surgery, but they did some exploration anyway. A careless nurse, attempting to inject dye to facilitate insertion of a catheter (for whatever reason) stuck the needle in one of my kidneys. Apparently the dye is known to cause kidney damage merely by being present in the body, but this was especially severe. Upon deciding to send me to a hospital that could perform the necessary operation, they sent me in an ambulance to one of the two nearest hospitals that were capable. Now the nearest one was on the main highway between the hospital where I was, and it was also the most qualified (doctors, facilities, etc.) and was about 15 minutes away. Once on the highway the ambulance had only to make a right turn and proceed to the emergency room entrance a couple hundred yards away. As the late Ross Perot liked to say, "now stay with me on this", it gets better. The ambulance continued past the nearer and better facility into the downtown area. The ancient hospital there was accessible only through a maze of old narrow streets, congested at the best times. Access to the emergency room was dicey even after entering the campus. I know all the explanations. I've heard them many times. Had heard them many times before. The hospitals have to alternate the destinations among those available if more than one are available. The hospitals have to alternate among different ambulance companies. Well, maybe in some places, although I doubt is done much anywhere. No, they were going to send me to that hospital, a patient likely dying and every second critical, another fifteen to twenty minutes away. All about the money, sweetheart deals, kickbacks and money under the table. I know that now, after years of investigation. Well, I made it. Well, not quite. They did the surgery, routine stuff. Only a couple of days later I went into cardiac arrest. But that's not the best part. I stopped breathing for twelve minutes. In the ICU. Go figure, as some generation or other says. So the first incompetent hospital sent me to another substandard one. I suppose it makes sense, birds of a feather. But the real crime was just getting underway. Whatever the reason - distancing their hospital from consequences? Or just general incompetence? There were two hospitals in that town. The ancient one, which nevertheless had a decent reputation, and a new one. The one the ambulance passed. Opened only three or so years ago. Completely new. Part of a network of respected hospitals based in the nearest large city. I don't know what would have happened if they had the right thing and sent me there, instead of something else. I just said there were two hospitals. Actually there were three, in a manner of speaking. Long ago, probably fifty years, a new modern hospital had been constructed and operated for probably twenty years. It was closed after its owners (a large for-profit conglomerate) had financial and legal problems. It was reopened for a couple of years, while the big new hospital was under construction. When it opened, the old one was closed and once again remained unused for a number of years. Then it was bought by a group of investors and opened as 'long term acute care hospital'. Just the place to dump problems like me. I'll be brief, as it is not about me. It is about the cancer in our society, and the cancer cells are close to being more numerous than the healthy ones. The long term acute care hospital (remember that I was sent there because of the kidney damage caused by the first hospital and the presumed brain damage caused by the incompetent staff of the second) was there for one reason and only one reason - to harvest the maximum amount of money from its victims. I was the perfect 'patient', allegedly comatose and unlikely to recover but also unlikely to die soon. A money machine. The only problem was, I was not brain-dead and the kidney damage was soon reversed (as usually happens in such cases) and there was no reason for me to be there. The hospital management had other ideas. They kept me drugged unconscious as much as possible, using drugs psychopharmaceutical drugs intended for use on mentally ill patients, along with numerous other drugs for real or imagined maladies. Whether it was incompetence or a deliberate attempt to use me for revenue generation (I suspect both) I was badly injured by the process. The drugs caused permanent neurological damage, and while my mind has for the most part recovered I remain physically disabled. It is likely that my life expectancy has been greatly reduced due to my injuries. Aside from the medical malfeasance, I was deliberately physically abused, from rough handling by a large mentally unstable orderly to being tied to the bed with wires. This left me with a permanent injury to an arm. Now, all of this is documented, and I have witnesses. I should be able to sue them. Shouldn't I? Shouldn't I? I contacted numerous law firms. The big ones. "For the people", one proclaims. Some smaller ones, but still big. Nearby big cities. In Jonesboro, by the way, after every one I contacted responded that "We don't sue Jonesboro hospitals" I stopped trying. I was told by some of the ones further away "It's not that you don't have a case, but we are not interested." Of course. Who wants to work when you can get what you want without it. If you hand them something they can get a settlement on without a trial, that's all they want. I tested this by using a hypothetical viable case and the same lawyers who didn't want the real case were eager to talk. Essentially, if you take them something on the order of a '16-year-old high school cheerleader in a car rear-ended by a drunk banker or someone else with money and insurance and left a quadriplegic, with her quarterback boyfriend dead for extra points' they can't wait to get on it. And the slip-and-fall routine, provided it fits the template, is a favorite. But if there's any actual work involved, or significant expenses, or anything outside their comfort zone, forget it. On one cares, and that's it. And money is the only important thing. How you can get the most with the least effort and risk. But in anycase money is not my interest. This hospital is literally, literally as in the literal meaning of the word literal, killing people. I know the next of kin to some of them. These are the ones that really make me angry. I survived, for the time. I can live with the condition I'm in. But those people are dead. I have communcated with their family members. A mother losing her son, not yet thirty years old. Because of the incompetence and greed of these people. I wanted to expose them. If the right people knew, maybe something would be done. In the past year I have (with the assistance of a friend to whom I am grateful for this and much more) contacted over four hundred "news media" organizations. Newspapers in towns and cities large and small, television stations in the area (this hospital harvests its victims from a four-state area, as I determined from the people who died there) and a number of regional and natioan publications. I got exactly one response, from a small newspaper. While searching for contacts, I looked at the websites of these organizations. The larger ones had pictures of their personnel. Editors, reporters, investigative reporters. I was especially certain to contact the 'investigative' reporters. Guess what? No response. They have the pictures on a lot of them, professionally photographed, lot of (moderately in most cases) attractive young women, a few men who are cleaned up pretty well. What do they investigate, I wonder? I've seen the television broadcasts, back when I watched television. I shouldn't have been surprised. I knew before, for a number of reasons, that the majority of homo sapiens is scum. I can probably count on both hands anyway the number of people outside my extended family that I have any respect for. At all. Oh I tolerate almost everyone, even if I don't especially like them. But people who aren't a hundred percent out for themselves, are probably one percent. Ironic perhaps, I'm a one percenter in another way. But I've seen enough to know to trust no one who isn't in that one percent. Not to waste one minute of my time or one cent of my money or one second of emotional involvement. I've known people for years, who seemed personable and inoffensive, never unpleasant... until they had an opportunity, go get something that was beyond their natural ability - money, a promotion at work or in their social envirironment - and as they say, their fangs came out. And the fact that they probably knew inside that they were unworthy of it, made them meaner. A friend (a one-percenter obviously) told me more than once, 'people suck'. And yeah, almost all of them do. Links: Hospital A Hospital B Hospital C Victims organization In The Belly of the Beast Human Harvest |
|