Less Than a Week…
My blog post today was supposed to be an essential piece regarding hearing loss in our patient population and what you can do to help your patients. It will have to wait. For now, just realize that lots of our patients don’t hear so well and it seems like you can’t do about it because Medicare doesn’t cover hearing aids. More about that later. Email me if you admit a very hard of hearing patient. I do not intend to diminish the significance of hearing loss, but we aren’t voting on it next week.
Today, I’m going to do something I try very hard not to do. With only a few days left until the election, I’m going to write a political post. I try to avoid this because in my Pollyannaish heart, I believe we all want the same thing – a country that is safe, fair taxes and equal opportunities to make the American Dream come alive for each of us. Obviously, we differ on how to get there. And as far as unsolicited advice goes, I will limit it to my strong insistence that you vote.
But I am spitting nails and losing my religion all at the same time this week because the president has accused pretty much the entire healthcare industry of colluding and conspiring to commit fraud. He said that other countries stated that patients who died ‘with’ covid were not coded as Covid deaths but American doctors and hospitals just put Covid down for everything.
What does this all mean? If the president knows what he is talking about and he does have an uncle who was a professor at MIT so he must know more than us, we have just been told:
- Pretty much everyone in the healthcare industry deserves prison time.
- We apparently do not code as well as other countries.
- We are all greedy and willing to compromise care for cash.
Healthcare professionals have gone from being heroes to criminals and for no purpose other than votes. Does the president not know how many registered voters work in healthcare? This comes on the tail of insulting Dr. Fauci (or Tony as the president calls him).
The same people who would believe this are the same who believe Covid is a hoax but in the event they catch it, they can always self-inject bleach so why does it matter?
Unlike bleach recommendations and the prediction that warm weather will chase the virus away, this particular misinformation harms patients. Patients who do not trust their physicians because they are criminals tend to be non-compliant.
Can you imagine being told that a painful surgery or chemotherapy with a plethora of side effects is your best chance for living a long and healthy life by someone who merely wants to pay for a summer home? Is there anyone in the world worse than a sleaze bucket who would lie about a diagnosis for a few extra dollars? How about those patients on the ventilator in ICU’s? Is all that expensive care really needed?
What about the nurses, therapists, coders and billers who facilitate this fraud on the US government? Fraud of this magnitude cannot be accomplished independent of the entire system.
I don’t often give advice on how to commit fraud, but I will offer one tidbit. Do not have a lot of co-conspirators if you steal from the government. It never works out.
I may be wrong. My uncles never attended MIT. I am not on the cutting edge of bleached science. Doctors aren’t nice to me because they have to be and I don’t suffer if I disagree with the president. I am not important enough to be silenced by the white house.
I am not going to tell you how to vote but good information is required to make good decisions. You decide how important it is to have the White House respect healthcare workers. I know that I will do my best regardless of who is in office. I also know that Covid isn’t a hoax treated with bleach.
For your Friday, enjoy two surgeons in the midst of the first surge of Covid singing Imagine on the front steps of the hospital. We all need a little hope.