Smoking Crack & Coat Hangers

I can no longer keep quiet about the whole “nationalize our healthcare” movement. I’m not sure what is worse, people who know absolutely squat about healthcare are making huge changes to it; or the fact that most of those people who are making the changes are lawyers.

Here’s the reality. One of the reasons healthcare costs are so high is because no one holds the patients accountable for their own healthcare. Physicians are forced to practice defensive medicine because society has gotten out of control with lawsuits. Medicine is not an exact science, and doctors are not super-human: they are human.

Consider this scenario: A 17 year-old male walks into the ER complaining of chest pain. He appears healthy and has no health problems. He fails to tell the doctor that he has been hitting up the crack pipe and snorting massive lines of cocaine for the past 5 hours. The patient tells him that the chest pain came on suddenly, he has shortness of breath, and he has some tingling in his arms and hands. The patient appears anxious, but otherwise his assessment is negative. The patient does tell the doctor that he has been stressed out lately, but still fails to mention his crack use. The patient’s vital signs are stable, besides some mild tachycardia (fast heart rate), and a mildly elevated blood pressure. There is no family history of cardiac problems, and the patient has no medical problems. He does not take any medications. The physician asks the patient if he has done any illicit drugs and the patient tells him “no”. Based on this interaction, the physician concludes that the patient is likely having a panic attack, and is having some anxiety. He does order an ECG just to rule out anything acute, but does not order a full cardiac work-up which includes labs, x-rays, etc. Before the ECG gets done, the patient suddenly codes (heart stops, stops breathing), and the patient can not be resuscitated.

So, who is at fault? Well, in this case the physician, the hospital, and the nurses involved in the case get slapped with a lovely lawsuit. They called it medical negligence. Say what??? Hmmm, it’s funny that no one questioned why the patient lied to the doctor and failed to tell him about his drug use. This little piece of information would have drastically changed the course of treatment. Sadly, these types of scenarios are what has forced many doctors to practice medicine as if each and every patient is going to sue them. They feel that they have to order tests that they probably don’t need to order. They feel if they don’t run them and something happens, they will get sued. This non-essential testing is a minute cause that driven up healthcare costs.
Then, you have the insurance companies who attempt to dictate to the physicians how they practice medicine. If a physician orders a test that is non-essential, but he orders it anyway, he runs the risk that the insurance company won’t pay because it wasn’t “medically necessary”. They are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

Second. It TOTALLY PISSES ME OFF when people receive government assistance and they abuse it. Johnny Doe receives Medicaid (state government funded healthcare) benefits. He has been told he has high blood pressure. He gets a prescription for high blood pressure pills. He doesn’t get them filled because he says he doesn’t have any money. FYI: MOST people who receive Medicaid benefits do not pay any more than $5 for any medication, while those of us who pay for private insurance can pay co-pays up to $75. Anyway, Johnny says he doesn’t have any money, but he just got a new I-Phone, and smokes a carton of cigarettes per week. Johnny’s kidneys eventually fail because of his un-controlled high blood pressure that he refused to take responsibility for. Now, Johnny is on hemo-dialysis 3 times a week for the rest of his life! So, instead of paying $5/month to fill his prescription, he now costs Thousands per week (at the tax payers expense) to take care of.

Third. (I swear this is not about me, but it did happen) Jane is pregnant. She is about 1 week away from her due date. Jane just can’t take it anymore. She and her mother come up with a plan to use a wire coat hanger to break her bag of water in order to induce labor. Jane is not successful. I think we can all agree she is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Wow! Now Jane has raging infection, and her unborn child is at risk for complications. Hmmmm. Now instead of having a normal delivery, she has complications that triple the cost of the care she will require.

Let’s nationalize healthcare and make people even less responsible than they already are! It’s not rocket science, it’s medicine. It’s not exact, there are advances, and there are set-backs. There are break-throughs and there are break-downs. There is not an easy solution to the problem, but nationalizing the system is not the answer. If people took a common sense approach to their own healthcare, perhaps this would help. If people made an informed decision to purchase their blood pressure medication, instead of crack, then we wouldn’t have such an issue.

Mr. President Obama: Quit chastising the physicians for how they practice medicine, and please don’t threaten them. Perhaps you should tell Johnny to say “no” to crack and “yes” to Norvasc! Tell Jane coat hangers are used for hanging coats, and should not be used as a tool to induce labor. Finally, tell that dead young man that smoked crack and snorted coke for 5 hrs that he is dead because of mistakes that he made, not mistakes that the healthcare team made. Say no to Crack!

Run For The Boarder

Have you heard the story of the Rancher in Arizona who is being sued by about 16 illegal Mexican immigrants?

Attorneys for the immigrants, who were trying to enter the US illegally, have accused the rancher of holding them captive at gunpoint, stating he would shoot anyone who tried to escape.

Now, the rancher is “being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Per the Washington Post “Mr. Barnett told The Washington Times in a 2002 interview that he began rounding up illegal immigrants after they started to vandalize his property, northeast of Douglas along Arizona Highway 80. He said the immigrants tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home.
Some of his cattle died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, he said, adding that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water.
Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch´s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil - which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their "clients" to keep them running.

“Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes.”

Ok….what???? When I read this story, I seriously thought it was a spoof. Since when do illegal immigrants have civil rights? I know that I wasn’t a stellar student in High School, but I’m pretty sure the Constitution didn’t grant illegal aliens the same rights as Americans.

Does this mean I can sue the Mexican government, or the owners of the Cancun hotel I stayed in because I drank tainted water? I had some serious emotional distress inflicted upon me. If you ever suffered from Montezuma’s revenge, then you know exactly what I am talking about.

This whole thing is sick and wrong. What has this country really come to? One has right to defend their land and their home. In fact, in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas there are laws that allow home/land owners to protect their land by shooting anyone who attempts burglarize or destroy their property. I use to live in Texas. Trust me, those cowboys don’t mess around.

Let’s just take the whole illegal immigrant element out of it, and take this situation for instance…..A man breaks into my home in the middle of the night. He doesn’t know that I am a pregnant, hormonal person. I catch him, grab him by his testicles, and squeeze and twist until he sounds like a girl. Does he have the right to sue me for inflicting emotional and physical distress upon him? I fear this is the precedence that will be set.

I in no way believe that this group of illegal border jumpers will ever win. But, imagine the fortune this rancher now has to fork out to hire a defense team.

The group of Mexicans is being defended by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). The what? Where is my educational fund? Oh, yes, that would be the student loan, granted to me by the government. But, I have to pay them back for the next 10 years, so it’s really not a fund at all.

As Washington struggles to figure out a way to help and assist Americans, we can feel reassured that there is already an American funded program out there that is going to help and assist these illegal immigrants who are suing Americans when they get busted trying to bust into our country illegally.