A For-Profit Hospital Slashed Costs. Then a Patient Froze to Death on Its Roof

jmole a day ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn't help that most hospitals essentially objectify patients these days.

When you are a patient, you are not a person, you are an object of medical care. There is an algorithm, a schedule; the arrival of new doctors and nurses at each shift change. They meet and talk with each other about how their objects are doing, and then they'll check in on you with a formal hello, 30 seconds of conversation, and then they'll leave.

If a patient has signs of mental illness, the providers draw straws to see who has the unlucky job of: "talk to the patient, but gently remind them that they are an object on a medical assembly line and probably nothing is going to happen until the next doctor comes around".

I don't know if hospitals have always been this way, or if we just romanticized them in the old movies. But unless you have a specific problem that medical intervention can solve (e.g., a medicine or a procedure), you are effectively a nobody, and there is nobody there that cares about you - at least for the definition of care that matters to most humans.

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orangeboats a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It sounds ridiculous to me that a hospital could be "for profit".

It is supposed to be a public infrastructure, folks!

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BugsJustFindMe a day ago | parent [-]

Capitalists don't believe in silly things like public infrastructure that might make the world better for everyone instead of making the wealthiest people wealthier. Reducing profit to save lives is socialism.

Of course there will always be sound rationale: "Don't they deserve to profit? These services cost money, so who will pay for them? And who are you to judge, for how many lives have you saved today? Aren't you just jealous?" And so on, for the love of wallowing in societal decay, happy to turn a blind eye to the suffering because common experiences feel remote when they happen to someone else, and we forget the connection to our political choices when they happen to us too.

There's no money left to spend on health because the yachts and jets can't buy themselves yet. Your life and health and wellbeing have no value if someone else can't get rich from them. So, no, no infrastructure for public good, only hundreds of millions of dollars per day to bomb Iran to distract from the Epstein files. And haven't you seen? The stock market is flying high, which is basically just as good as taking care of the poor.

	▲	lifestyleguru a day ago \| parent [-]
		Public hospitals operated for profit are absolutely a case in European countries with public universal healthcare.

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ratelimitsteve a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The part where they blatantly lied to the patient's family, saying they found their loved one's body at a Dollar General down the road, then in the parking lot, then finally admitting that they were on the roof after gaining access to a secure area because the door was propped open, that's the part that to my mind should result in the harshest criminal charges.

It won't though. Because someone made money, and money is the only legal, moral or ethical force in our society today.

	▲	lifestyleguru a day ago \| parent [-]
		It it makes it any better this happens also in Europe, everyone are lying. In a tragic case of a family member dying in hospital a simple question "where the body was found?" and following up on the answers can reveal a lot. Never assume the person died in their hospital bed under full care and attention.