As a former public servant done wrong in that service, I HATE the United States Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) . . . with a deeply-seeded, visceral hatred. The agency that administers, among other things, Medicare and Medicaid, is a bloated, criminally-ineffecutal Behemoth that needs to be GUTTED from top to bottom, and started all over again.
As regular readers know, it was that governmental agency's utter failure to police its own programs (in my case the National Health Service Corps, aka NHSC) and enforce its own contracts that left my life in shambles.
The NHSC brass just let the local "non-profit" hospital pound-the-hell out of me - for all of the WRONG reasons - and did not lift a finger to stop it!?!
If a couple of phone calls from the Feds had been made in 1998, the malevolent stunts Randolph Hospital executives pulled with me could have been stopped in their tracks. It really was THAT simple. But the NHSC did not care. The program whose stated "mission" was supposed to be about physician recruitment and RETENTION to medically-under-served areas could not be bothered when a physician was run out of her hometown on rail for doing her duty and saving a baby's life.
Helping a physician protect a patient was the LAST thing that the NHSC/DHHS was about.
Of course, "non-profits" in North Carolina have, for decades, gotten away with fiscal murder. There's no transparency. Zero accountability. Abject morons like Randolph CEO, Robert Morrison, prance around like captains-of-a-captive-industry (or a really poor man's Bill Clinton), stuff their pockets on the public dime, and no-one-who-is-supposed-to-be-overseeing so much as blinks.
I mean, Randolph Hospital paid this POSER over $700,000 in salary and deferred benefits last year alone!!! For going on two decades, this man (who, as I remember him, cannot make even the simplest of decisions without a consultant) has run the place like a carpet-bagging Stalin - he's driven a number of very good doctors out of town - people who wanted to stay but just could not make their lives work Bob's way. Nurses and other "lesser" employees are pawns to him. Cancer is big money and glamorous, while Psych patients are for-damned-sure out-of-luck. Under the cover of public charity, Morrison has monopolized public resources and committed FELONIES to get his way. And Asheboro's hospital CEO was so concerned for the public safety and welfare that he proudly stepped out as supporting making it easier for alcohol to get in the hands of alcoholics (but hey, that's okay - cuz one of his minions can dream up some bogus scheme to "study" alcoholism and get grant funds out of the ABC Board).
His theory was that it brought in doctors.
So I'm thinking he should apply for funds to "study" the drinking habits of his medical staff.
Speaking of doctors, doctors all over this state will tell you that Asheboro is a medical black-hole. I know because I've worked all over this state, and my ears BURN when I tell other doctors that I live there.
And yet, the Courier Tribune still sleeps. It's not about good journalism - or telling anyone the truth about what it going on around them and under their noses, but keeping the plebes ignorant and the ad-men happy.
I've digressed. In my case, with few exceptions, the NHSC & Rural Health Service drones sitting at the desks in Raleigh, Atlanta, Bethesda and Washington were brain-dead cowards . . . apparently just warm bodies poised to shuffle paperwork and look like they were doing something whilst collecting their Federal paychecks. NHSC providers will tell you these people are USELESS when doctors in the program need a hand fighting corruption or bad medicine.
A couple of days ago, I heard from yet another NHSC provider-done wrong (in her case, New York state) - who found me via the blogs - and who e-mailed me a copy of the complaint she filed with DHHS regarding her experience with the National Health Services Corps.
Reading her treatise was enough to induce PTSD.
Regular readers know that it infuriated me when Obamacare (which only served to bloat the Behemoth even more) kept throwing money at the NHSC with no questions asked - and with no real reform of its oversights mechanisms suggested.
Indeed, as the "debate" over "reform" raged, NHSC alumna, Dr. Mary NEVER got invited to Washington - despite the fact that for over a DECADE, she has BEGGED for someone to listen.
And remember how Greensboro's benevolent, all-knowing, well-wishing, truth-seeking. Clinton-Edwards-Obama-loving journalists like John Robinson and Edward Cone-of-THE-Cones told me that my story (which I never was able to condense to less than 100 words) was "irrelevant" to the issues of today?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, an independent, non-partisan financial audit of DHHS, completed this past November (2010) is fairly scary.
The full financial report is here. And here are just two excerpts from the findings:
“HHS's financial management systems are not compliant with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996.”
“HHS’s formalized policies and procedures are out of date and may be inconsistent with actual processes taking place….For example, we noted that certain policies and procedures, including certain accrual processes, had not been updated since the mid-1980s.”
And there you have it. Non-compliant. Antiquated. Inconsistent with what's going on in the real world. Fiscally speaking, USDHHS has had its head up its ass since before I even got into medical school. The nearly two-hundred thousand taxpayer dollars poured down the drain when Randolph Hospital breached the spirit, intent and letter of every single agreement they ever signed with me was just spit in a bottomless bucket.
So I want to say to the premiere/high-minded "journalists" of our local blogosphere (with apologies to Jeff Sykes) . . . . journalists who could not spare even a few minutes to look at the cold hard truth behind the black-&-white of sworn discovery documents . . . TELL ME AGAIN, you oh-so-politically-correct, liberal, pseudo-intellectual, pandering cowards (my words would be stronger here, but I'm trying to clean up the language) . . . you kept-man & trust-fund-baby . . . that what happened to me right under your stuck-up elitist noses is "irrelevant" to what needs to be fixed.
TELL ME AGAIN I'm not supposed to be white-hot ANGRY about thirteen years of being pounded and provoked in every way imaginable . . . because I did what I was supposed to do . . . first by people who wanted to destroy me . . . and then by arrogant/entitled jerks-billing-themselves-as-journalists who actually HAD NO CLUE about a living a disconnected life not funded/subsidized by Canada Dry or Cone Mills.
TELL ME AGAIN that I'm a "wack-job" or deserved to be cyber-stalked.
TELL ME AGAIN that I need to "get over it" and "move on".
Most of all, TELL ME AGAIN, that we need to give the government ANYTHING else in healthcare to manage/do.
OBTW, geniuses, I'm thinking the legal case I've been working on making just got a whole lot stronger.
One day, after all of this plays out, as you write (for the umpteenth time) about your innate "integrity" and "credibility" and contributions to "citizen journalism", you'll no doubt tell everyone you opened doors and (sincerely, down-deep, really) wished me well - even as you sneered and spit and tried to pass me off on Jerry Bledsoe . . . or stood by and snickered/shared passwords while Jeff Martin did his little cyber-terrorist act.
May God save this country and its hard-working, honest citizens from your political agenda and your world view. Because it's KILLING us.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment