Dork!

Seated on the sofa after returning from our little day trip to Natchitoches, I took the place of the husband that had left to sit with Carrie at the kitchen counter while she ate her noodles. I was just finishing up downloading the pictures I took today and was only half listening to what was on the television and certainly had not noticed what channel the husband had been listening to. The commentator was interviewing some dimwitted congressman. I could tell because of the idiotic proposals and double talk about health care and how doctors should be providing quality care instead of quantity care and those doctors should be held accountable. Well, duh, damnit. Let's see now. Who will stand over those doctors and make sure they are not booking more then what the government thinks is equal to quality of care. Is that how our government would hope to regulate such an idiotic measure? I took note. Fox News. The husband isn't a fan of Fox but he believes you have to be aware of what all media is saying so he surfs all the news channels.

Doctors and hospitals have to negotiate with the insurance companies for their patient care. I remember when doctors would limit how many medicare patients they would accept but that is a thing of the past. With the insurance companies setting a limit on what they will pay for a hospital stay, a surgery and a doctor's care for that surgery, doctors are now upping the overall number of patients they try to see in one day while the hospitals cut staffing to offset the loss of revenue

contained by the insurance companies. The insurance companies? Less pay, more profit for them. The goal is to not spend out what is taken in on those premiums.

The outcome? Doctors rush you through with a smile, but with very little information or time spent with you. Time is money. Money they thought they would make before the insurance companies clamped down on paying. Private pay insurance now pays a little more then for a medicare patient. Hospitals have minimal nurses on the floor, housekeeping staff is rushed and lab personnel are overworked. Hell, everyone is overworked.

Everyone, doctors and hospitals are trying their best to maintain their earnings pre insurance bartering and the only way to do that is to work faster, spend less time with the patients and for the hospitals, cut staffing. Dangerous times all around in the health care industry. I'm grateful I'm out of it for now.

The problem for me is that I have to go into these pits of horror for surgery; have to be sedated and unaware of what is going on around me. I am aware of the dangerous situations in the hospitals related to the staffing and it frightens me.

Let me down off this soapbox before I fall off and break my neck. Thankfully this surgery will be on an outpatient basis. I'll be in and out in one day and back to immobility for awhile. I must admit, I'm not taking this well. I didn't anticipate another year of rehab from another surgery.

I can remember being in Colorado 2 months after my knee replacement and feeling the pain in my heel. It's been taht long that this has been going on and it's time to get this done.