Because You Never Asked

ADVENTURES in CAPITALISM, I

     Being that the Wall Street Journal has claimed the title of this essay as its motto, the writer is well aware of the risk in using it. Our species has arrived to a moment in time where these three words, as arranged above, can only be written or uttered by or with the consent of the Money Bible. Such risk could be avoided by rearranging the words --- Capitalism in Adventures, Capitalism Adventures in, In Capitalism Adventures, etc. --- thus rendering the interests of the Wall Street Journal unthreatened, but I've decided to go down with my guns blazing. Listen up Wall Street Journal: Adventures in Capitalism, Adventures in Capitalism . so sue me.

     Before discussing some of my latest adventures in capitalism, some groundwork must be laid.

     I once again write these dubious philosophical patterings from my habitual spot by the Roman Sea, my annual two month stay in the Spanish Mediterranean having become a reality. With the passing of the years, the evidence now shows that my initial offering with regard to this migratory change of scenery is usually inspired by the air travel itself. This year held form. (See this essay's sibling, Adventures in Capitalism, II).

     One of the Holy Commandments of the Thatcher-Clinton-Free-Marketeer-Cowboys is the utilization of commercial competition to provide a favorable consumer environment. It's a simple concept, well within the grasp of the minions roaming googly eyed through Circuit City: you allow businesses to go to war and the ones providing the best combinations of product, price and service will survive the Darwinian world of Alan Greenspan's mood changes. Simple.

     Too simple.

     In the last year or so, I've stumbled upon some interesting contradictions with regard to this Holy Commandment of unfettered business competition, contradictions that lead one to question the devotion of the Thatcher-Clinton cowboys to their own Deities. These contradictions evidence a manipulation of the game such that empresarial self interest is able to bully concerns for the consumer off to the side.

     My first brush with these contradictions came about a year and a half ago when I decided to have knee surgery. The disappointing results of this decision are well documented in these pages (see essay "Health Care"). I was charged an exorbitant amount of money for an, at best, mediocre result, the vast majority of it going to the local hospital for a seven hour use of its facilities. This hospital used to be a non-profit organization funded in ways I don't quite understand other than to say it was not a commercial enterprise. With the advent of free market health care, it has become a pure business venture whose primary goal, like all business ventures, is to maximize profits. This leaves the healing of the sick as a purely coincidental aspect of this.

     This is where the Thatcher-Clinton cowboys would jump in and invoke the Holy Commandment of free market competition. If the consumer is not happy with the product, take your business elsewhere. Simple.

     Too simple.

     There is only one hospital in the town where I live. It serves a permanent population of 25,000 people, along with the many thousands of tourists who provide their livelihood. The nearest large city is 150 miles away. There is no option for the "consumer". (What a pathetic euphemism for a sick person!) Privatizing health care in such an environment has created a business monopoly that is the antithesis of free market rhetoric. It has provided undistinguished services at an unfair price, and I'm sure there are towns all over America suffering similar conditions.

     About three months ago, on a Sunday evening, I had no choice but to use the local hospital's emergency room. In one sense I must be grateful; they cured me of what was diagnosed as a kidney stone. When I arrived I was in a state of great discomfort and within a few minutes I was given some kind of intravenous drug that soon made being alive a bearable experience. (Three years later, as I put this essay on my web site, it seems that their diagnosis was wrong. Later problems with the same symptoms led a urologist to declare it an infection, a much simpler problem to deal with.)

     Fine. Thank you. I appreciate it, I really do. When the day is done and that final out is put in the books forever, the alleviation of such dire pain is the most fundamental. But if this service is being provided purely in exchange for the commercial benefit my suffering means to this hospital, then the rest of the story must be told as well.

     After having been hooked up intravenously, I lay on a cot for the next three hours, adrift and alone as the storm of a big hospital's emergency room blew all around me. There were a bevy of technicians, nurses, aids, knaves, lackeys and serfs, whirling in all directions. Ambulances arrived and departed. The constant squawk of a police band radio raged on the storm. I felt like a discarded bottle floating on a hurricane sea.

     Three hours in such conditions can be somewhat disturbing. Perhaps I had reached some kind of delirious state, but all the girls working there seemed worthy of copulatory consideration. It was as if Hugh Hefner were the head of personnel. Damn, I thought, I'll have to look better the next time I fall desperately ill. Two such Playmates, at around the three hour mark, came and wheeled me over to a machine that took some x-rays, or photos . who knows? . and wheeled me back from whence I'd come. This took about 25 minutes, leaving me, once again, no more than a piece of debris adrift in the storm. More than two hours later, someone who claimed to be a doctor arrived cot side. He vaguely explained what was wrong with me, gave me three Percosets (the costs of which were found hiding cowardly in the bill I received two weeks later), told me what to do if I were not better in the morning, and disappeared into the maelstrom of emergency room confusion, never to be seen again.

     On my way out, I asked one of the nurses how many doctors were working that night? "One." "One?" "That's right." I timidly ventured that one doctor seemed inadequate and they should have more. She smiled and sadly shook her head, as if to say, "yeah, and tomorrow we'll have a cure for cancer."

     It is my guess that this business venture did not want to pay more than one doctor, even on a weekend evening at the height of the tourist season when the level of vacation mayhem is at its zenith. I thus spent more than five hours there for a no-brainer medical procedure, one half hour of which being attended to, five minutes of which having anything to do with an honest to God doctor. I was then sent a bill for such an exorbitant amount, I'm embarrassed to say it. It was a four-figure number that no average person would consider spending on anything without a good deal of thought . unless you are trapped in a hospital. Which brings me to the second essay in this duo, "Adventures in Capitalism, II".  

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info