The Cost of Deception - The US Health System is in Disarray and Becoming Worse...

[Junkdrawer]

If you take a big problem, like skyrocketing medical costs, and treat it as a Disaster Capital opportunity, squeeze excessive profits out all the while obscuring the debate with massive ruses, you will:

1.) Extract Maximum profits (for a short while).

2.) So disguise the real problems that you risk bring the whole system down around your ears.

I make my bread as a healthcare programmer/analyst. Even my conservative friends in the industry are seeing #2 occurring at a breathtaking rate. People at the top are drinking their own Kool-Aid.

But my, aren't we clever?

[Junkdrawer]

1. So funny you want to cry...

So fast, so far that Medical Outcomes are being replaced with Customer Satisfaction as the measure of effectiveness. Nurses are encouraged to hold birthday parties, etc. to get on the good side of patients.

Get it? If you're good at propaganda, lousy at actual effectiveness, change the grading criteria to something you're good at.

Senior doctors are apoplectic. Junior docs see it as just another insult.

[bananas]

2. Thanks for the insights.

During the Iran-Contra hearings, at some point a programer/analyst was called to testify for some reason.

He said that at the time in question, they were in crisis mode because their models on Reagan's bankrupting deregulation showed it would result in a major collapse of the S&L industry.

It seemed he was trying to get it on the official record that the people at the top knew it would collapse the industry and wanted it to happen.

This was sworn congressional testimony broadcast worldwide on live tv.

[chervilant]

3. Interesting...

I was a Branch Manager in the largest thrift in Texas when things started going wonky -- so, I did a bit of research (actually, a LOT of research) to find out why the DIDC (staffed by bankers) was deregulating thrifts, and what was REALLY going on in the financial millieu. I had to dig deep (in microfiche, no less!) because the M$M was already lying like a cheap rug. The things I found!

I got out six months before the S&Ls went belly up -- and all of my colleagues (who elected to ridicule my concerns) called to eat crow for doubting the results of my research.

[Junkdrawer]

5. What's especially interesting to me about that story is this:

Willful Ignorance - the strong desire to see business-as-usual as a permanent state and the active filtering of all evidence to the contrary. Usually a boiling frogs kind of thing. And those of us with working-but-badly-compromised nerves in our skins look around and ask "What the hell??"...

[Junkdrawer]

4. See also:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022346858

and my discussion with Warpy here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2347674