It Finally Happened!
The Herald, South Florida’s major newspaper, headlined the unthinkable this past week: Jackson Halts Dialysis of Poor Patients . One of the nation’s top-rated hospitals, Miami’s Jackson Health System had to adopt a policy that would deprive some 175 indigent patients of critical, life-saving care because it could no longer afford to provide it.
Hardly a decision taken lightly by the hospital administration, the financially strapped institution finally had to draw the line on life. Fortunately for those patients , some of the other area hospitals volunteered to take up the slack for all but about 4o. These would have to seek care in the city’s emergency rooms, where the law requires the hospitals to provide critical care regardless of the financial condition of the patient—or the hospital!
This, to me, is a tragic and stunning case in point that illustrates a simple fact: no matter how humane and compassionate the issue, the ultimate truth is that there simply ain’t no free lunch. As much as we would like to characterize medical care as a right rather than a privilege, without the funds to provide it, it vanishes.
Reminder: Join me on Take Stock with Ellis Traub, This evening (Thursday) at 7:30PM Eastern (6:30PM Central). Call (347) 857-3608 to listen. Dial “1″ to join the conversation. This evening’s topic will be unfunded mandates.
Unfortunately, our economic problems have become exacerbated over the years and so insideously that this kind of critical outcome has crept up to bite us in our behinds because we have failed to heed the former, not-so-subtle warnings. But this is only the beginning. Jackson’s just one of several…at this moment. Our economic problems are a trend and the worst is yet to come.
Where we used to squabble about not having enough public funds to maintain roads properly or fund museums—and our legislators could get away with earmark murder—we now haven’t the public money to fund critical care. And no healthcare legislation we may pass is going to be any different from any other unfunded mandate that, despite the good intentions, simply cannot be implemented because there are no funds to do it.
This condition can be reversed , but only when our country’s culture takes into account that the despised and detested “demon,” business, with it’s “obscene” profits, must be supported, nourished, and welcomed and a climate created so it can grow, furnish jobs, and produce something of value that will generate money. This has to start in the schools, in the homes, and at the lowest economic levels of our society.
The lessons of entrepreneurialism are, at this point in our history, more important than liberal arts. And, unless we get behind an effort to teach our young about these things, our young will eventually have to dine on each other! Sadly, there are few teachers in the schools who have been appropriately schooled, because they, too, have been raised in an era of “magic wand economics” where they, too, believe that faith in the Patron Saint Ponzi will somehow see them through!
