Calamity in the News

I read the news a lot, mostly for the entertainment of it all, the corruption of politicians, the party crashers at the White House and so on. I find it to be sometimes overwhelming when I read of the excesses of government agencies or large corporations who abuse the positions they hold to further their gains. Then there is just the sheer lunacy of some City offals officials that carries the news to new lows.

For instance, a group called Medical Billing Advocates of America that helps patients to review their hospital bills reveals that hospitals are overcharging patients by obscene amounts, sort of like those manufacturing companies did a while back charging $1,043 for a hammer or some such thing while greedily lining their pockets with taxpayer’s hard got dollars and sitting on their cozy government contracts to rip off and funnel money back to keep getting said contracts.

The thing I liked about this article was the names hospitals gave to hide the truth of what they were really charging for. So clever, so imaginative. I would love to have this person’s job. I could go into work every day, get my cup o’joe (on the house), browse the internet news, facebook and favorite websites, check my emails then try to come up with catchy names for standard everyday items to make them sound more important and worth charging an outrageous sum to dispense to patients who were not even going to see their bill until they left the hospital.

Example: They found that they were being charged $12 for a “mucus recovery system”; essentially a box of beside Kleenex tissues. You know that box? Its slightly bigger than a credit card holder and contains palm sized piece squares of tissue (?) that compromise the effectiveness of not blowing your nose on your chest and gives you splinters from the cheap wood pulp fibers. A normal box of tissues purchased at would cost no more than $2 and the tissues would easily cover your nose, catch your “mucus” and not give you rug burns on the sides of the nostrils.

Then there was the “fog eliminator device”. Basically a piece of gauze to wipe down surgical equipment for which they hungrily charged $57!! Unbelievable no? No. Not even surprising anymore really.

Same price for the “cough support device” aka Teddy Bear for kids who are sick. I never got a cough control device when I was at the hospital. I wonder what they would call an enema? My imagination does cartwheels here. What would YOU think they could call it?

How about those stupid socks with the rubber bits on the bottom? Or the bed-pan? Is your imagination jumping through hoops now too? Its giving me a headache. I’ll have to ask for a couple of brain swelling inflammation pills.