Give Us Money If You Want To Live
Billboard adverts for hospitals piss me off.
Why do hospitals advertise? Well to make more money, of course. That's why anyone advertises. What pisses me off is that the theme of almost all of the hospital advertising that you see is something to the effect of We Care About People, implying that they aren't worried about a trivial little thing like profits. What matters is your health!
There is billboard for a children's hospital that I see when I travel to Marietta, saying something to the effect of "For People, Not Profits." It makes me want to call the hospital director and point out that he could better spend his "for people" money on more nursing staff, or dialysis machines, or even pure research, rather than advertising. I tell a lie: it really makes me want to scream and drive my car off a cliff.
Meet Dr. Han. He pulls down 450K a year, after taxes, thanks to billboards like these.
I can only imagine a scene where I am lying in a puddle of my own blood, looking up at a paramedic and with my last conscious breath spit out: "Just don't take me to the place with more robot surgery than any other facility in North Georgia . . . gasp . . . take me to the one where . . . cough . . . their experience makes my experience better."
Tip The Balance
Nobody wants to live in the Land of Pure Capitalism. Where the cops show up and ask for your credit card before they help. Where every transaction is buyer beware and if you don't want to get taken advantage of then, hey, don't go to the store. Where you eventually reach your maximum potential earning point and your family has to decide if its still worth it to feed you, or is it time to put you out on the ice flow. Where innovation is everywhere but no one regulates safety testing so that Next Amazing Thing just might give you cancer. Where you get fired for work injuries that affect your productivity. Seriously, all of y'all who think that Ayn Rand is a saint lack the imagination to really picture that world.
Nobody wants to live in the Land of Pure Socialism. Where the genius who discovers a way to stop organ transplant rejection can expect the exact same salary and place to live as the slacker who delivers your pizza late. Where your professional decisions have little or no consequence that your job becomes wholly interchangeable, so everyone aspires to the low stress trades and nobody has any motivation to be a soldier or fireman, much less an eight-year-of-school-needin', irregular heartbeat-fixin' Doctor Han. And no offense to the idealists everywhere but the Magic Happy Sunflower world we all dream of is umpteenth generations of human evolution away - if it can ever exist at all.
So lets agree that a good society needs a mix. Some institutions should be based on Profit Motive - department stores leap to mind, as do manufacturers, advertisers, the folks who make beer and pretzels and frozen pizza.
Some institutions should clearly not be based on Profit Motive - our police, military, intelligence forces, the post office in the age of Fed Ex, and our government.all spring to mind.
Thus Spake The Traveling Now
I say we take health care from the For Profit column and add it to the Not For Profit column. Get hospitals out from under the oppression of having to earn shit tons of money for the shareholders.
Anytime a consumer is forced to make a capitalist decision about the quality of his life or extent of his longevity, society fails. Period. No one should ever go bankrupt because they or someone in their family is ill, no one should have to decide between paying their mortgage or having their cancer treated, no one should ever be placed in a position where they have to consider terminating a pregnancy because they discover that their child will have expensive health issues for all its life.
Can We Talk About Something Else Mister Preachy ?
I started this blog to help me get through the bad times, those times when I want to get stuff off my chest. And so far so good. I have three followers, received my first comment ("tits please" - can't help you there Anonymous, but thanks anyhow), and I've had the space to put my two cents in.
Now I want your two cents. Input gets output. What do you want? More personal stuff, more politics, more pictures? You let me know and I'll try to accommodate. And yes, If I get enough requests for tits I'll see what I can do.
Be careful what you wish for, amigos.
Anyway I am still dealing with content and format issues. Did you notice that I stole the Cracked dot com photo/ small caption joke format?
What can I say? I even think in Cracked idioms these days. Thanks Cracked folks!
Anyway the format will evolve. Everything evolves. If I can leave you with a bit of advice today its that you shouldn't resist evolution, much less deny it, and you should proudly wear your influences. After all, your influences are are your teachers - honor them.
Traveling Now Out!
