Struggling Towards Optimism

I am trying real hard to be hopeful about humanity but it ain't easy with 60 Minutes around.

Two stories last night that slapped me in the face.

The first was about Health Management Associates, a multi billion dollar health management company with no soul. What a surprise. These people buy up hospitals and then institute goals and guidelines that force doctors to act in the interest of profit and against the interests of their patients.

Their approach is to set admissions goals of 20%. Doctors interviewed for the piece said typical admission rates are 10%. The only way to meet the 20% goal is to admit patients that do not really need to spend time in the hospital. Doctors are measured on their performance and if they are too far below the goal they are fired.

This is so despicable it is beyond belief. Playing games with peoples' health to essentially increase sales. This is the #1 reason I despise hospitals and fear ever being in a helpless position where I am forced to be hospitalized. I believe there is a good chance that decisions will be made about my care that have nothing to do with my health.

For people over the age of 65 the admissions goal of these monsters is 50%. Think about that. The most vulnerable people are the ones who are being victimized the most. One of the doctors said that this is dangerous because elderly people are more prone to "hospital acquired infections". In general the doc said the practice is dangerous to all of these patients, no matter the age, because of the possibility of medical mistakes. Imagine being unnecessarily admitted to a hospital and then having something go wrong because of some hungover bozo with the wrong medical chart.

Sounds like The Twilight Zone.

Health Management Associates installed software programs in their hospitals that automatically schedule a series of tests upon admission based on a person's age or situation BEFORE a doctor ever takes a look at the patient. The software also discourages doctors from sending patients home. When the doctor recommends that and hits send, a message automatically pops up that says "This patient is approved for admission - do you want to override that?" If the doctor does override it, he is questioned about it.

This is not original news in todays' world. But it sickens me to know that medical treatment is manipulated to increase profits regardless of the risk to the patients. And it sickens me to hear these types of stories over and over again. Because multi billion dollar companies can afford whatever fine is levied and then move on to find other ways to steal while callously risking lives.

The second story was about political prison camps in North Korea. They have a policy called Three Generations of Punishment. A person who commits a political crime is imprisoned and their kids and grand kids are imprisoned as well for their entire lives. This is designed to eliminate the lineage of opposition.

The largest number of political prisoners in these camps today are the children and grandchildren of the original prisoners. Innocent people who never see life outside a prison camp.

Unbelievable that this can exist in the 21st century. The guy featured in this piece was born in a camp and spent 23 years there.

They have public execution fields where inmates are forced to watch executions of people who have tried to escape or hidden information about escape attempts or who have helped somebody else to escape. The guy in the story watched a kid beaten to death in a prison school for hording corn. They also have underground torture chambers.

He was emotionless as he told the story. Up until he escaped he knew nothing of the outside world, nothing about normal society and how it functions. All he knew were the rules of the camp.
He turned his mother and brother in for plotting to escape and watched them executed. He said he did it because they violated the rules of the camp and he knew no better. Family meant nothing under those conditions.

That was hard for me to stomach. But who knows how a mind develops that is born and raised in this bizarre world. Maybe normal connections and relationships and understanding is impossible from the start. He said the public executions were not as bad for the rest of the inmates as you might expect because it was a break from the hard labor they were forced to perform. Strange logic in our world; maybe not in that world.

His eyes were opened when he met a new inmate. Someone who told him of the outside world. The two of them tried to escape. The new inmate died on the electrified fence. The featured guy was able to escape by using the body as insulation. He travelled through China and eventually made it to South Korea where he lives a normal life today at the age of 30.

Neither of these stories told me anything new about the level of corruption and evil in the world. It's just the scope of it that I find so disheartening. These are not isolated incidents and they are not small.

I don't get the human race at all.