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It's been quite a while since I have had a chance to catch up on this, hospitals and doctors tend to interfere with the writing process. For those of you who don't know, I have been trying to get over a series of misfortunate interactions with doctors.

It all started simply enough, I had an abdominal hernia, for the fourth time, and my esteemed doctors refused to fix it. Now I won't tell you, they didn't have an excuse, they did, it just was not a real good one.

It seems that my heart has a tenancy sometimes to beat just a bit fast, say around two hundred beats per minute, and this has a tenancy to make them uneasy. I keep trying to tell them, that's not so serious, after all, before my ablation it used to go to four hundred. Thing is, they wanted to wait until it was an emergency before they fixed it.

Now I don't know about you, but to me; it seems a bit stupid to wait until things get worse; before fix you fix something. I am not a doctor, so, I suppose this stupid idea may have a basis in medical science. In aviation, however, letting a problem get worse before applying corrective action; is an invitation to disaster. That is an excellent way to crash and burn, quite literally.

Still, they waited till my hernia strangulated, meaning my little instance twisted allowing nothing could pass. If they did not fix this, I would die. Great idea boys and girls, meaning the doctors, wait until a patient is literally dying before you fix them. That simple surgery just became a lot more complex.

Now let's mix in one of the most incompetent emergency room doctors I have ever heard of. Most hospitals seem to put their most incompetent doctors in the emergency room. I have been taken to the emergency room five times in the last ten years. Two of those times I was sent home by the same, he shall remain unnamed, doctor.

The first time this incompetent doctor sent me home, the same ambulance crew, took me back to the hospital the next morning, at three in the morning. I spent six days in the hospital with walking phenomena. The second time, that same idiot, sent me home, over the objection of three other doctors. These doctors were calling me, before I got home, telling me to go back to the hospital admitting, bypassing the emergency room. This was for my third emergency surgery in two months.

I guess I should tell you more about that stupid emergency room! That hernia the doctors wanted to wait until it got to be an emergency, well it got to be an emergency. The ambulance crew halls me to the hospital and after only about half an hour of laying alone, in extreme pain, a nurse comes in and takes my blood pressure and temperature. She fills out the spaces on her forms for this information and leaves. Half an hour later someone comes in and connects me to the cardiac monitor.

Next comes the X-Ray machine. Someone in the emergency room decided it might not be a terrifically bright idea to try to move me go to the X-Ray room. I am  after all doubled up in pain. They bring a portable unit to the room I have been abandoned in. This gal want's to put a two foot by two and a half foot plastic and metal plate under my back. I had trouble just laying on the stupid gurney due to the pain I am in and here I am, having to sit up enough for this thing to be put under my back. Then things got worse. She wanted to put it down lower, so she could get another picture of my belly.

Now comes the medical assistant, not the doctor, and tells me, I have to have a CT-Scan. I don't know if you have ever been in the hospital being rolled through the halls on a gurney, but the wheels never seem to be perfectly round, there is always at least one wheel with a flat spot. Then there are the raised thresholds in the doors. Next, fun of fun, you get to move, from the gurney, to narrow sheet covered board which pushes you into the CT-Scan machine. The scanner is OK, the picket fence you have to lay on is what kills you.

Anyway, they finish the scan and roll me back to the room where I am promptly left for another half hour to hour laying on the gurney. At last they come in and give me a shot of Morphine. More time passes.

Finally, the assistant comes in and tells me that there is no surgeon on duty so they are going to send me to blanketed e blank hospital and I, recognizing the name of the one hospital that well people never leave, at least not without a sheet over their face, say no send me to Wilson and Jones. The assistant leaves and five minutes later the doctor comes in and tell me if I don't agree to go to blanketed e blank I am going to die withering in pain on this gurney.

I was still in pain, despite the Morphine, and, possibly confused from the drugs going into me through my IV, so I reluctantly said OK. I should have told that idiot where to go then called a friend to take me to Wilson and Jones.

Now keep in mind that this was an emergency surgery, I lay in the emergency room in Durant for a couple of hours, the ambulance takes almost forty-five minutes to take me to that blanked e blank hospital, to hell with it, it was TMC in Denison Texas. At TMC, they leave me, laying in a room, until around noon the next day. Finally, they roll me into surgery.

The surgeon cuts on me, puts mesh in my belly, sows me up, and, when I leave the hospital four days later, I felt like crap. Now, if you have ever had belly surgery, you know that the belly hurts a lot where the sides of the wound try to pull apart, but other than that you feel fine. I felt like wormed over crap.

A week later I have an appointment with the surgeon and the wound is still weeping fluid. I should tell you that this is my fourth hernia surgery and belly wounds don't do that for that period of time unless something is not right. He removes half the staples, slap's another bandage on it and sends me home with an appointment for the next week. The next week, feeling far worse and the wound still weeping to the point I change the bandage every six hours, he removes the rest of the staples and sends me home with an appointment for two weeks.

I go home then four days later, I realize that I have been siting on the couch for over twenty four hours without moving. Time to call the EMT's again. They come, take one look at me and start trying to stick an IV tube in my arm while they load me on the gurney. This time, the lights and sirens, are screaming while they run to the hospital. Less than an hour later I'm unconscious and in surgery to take out the infected mess put in by the first surgeon.

Evidently, there was a lot of infection because they had to leave my belly open. They just packed the hole with bandages, put a wire frame in the hole to keep the covering from going into the wound then stuffed me in intensive care. For the first time, in over two weeks, I start to feel better; despite having a six inch by four inch hole deeper than an inch in my belly.

They put foam in the wound and hook me up to a vacuum pump to keep the fluid from building up in the wound. After four days, I get to go home. This time I'm actually feeling better.

Now things certainly get interesting. Every day from Monday through Friday I go to something called the Wound Care Center. Twice a week, they pull out the old foam, clean the wound, measure it to make sure it's getting smaller, fill it with new foam and reconnect the pump. Every day they put me in a hyperbolic chamber for one and a half to two hours.

You would have fun in a hyperbolic chamber, not! You lay there, twiddling your thumbs or trying to watch TV while they pump pure oxygen into the thing at twice the atmospheric pressure. For those of you which remember their history, a pure oxygen environment was what killed the astronauts in Apollo One. Pure oxygen is an extremely powerful healing force which if properly used can make your wounds heal faster. Pure oxygen is one of the most dangerous things you will ever encounter in your life.

Most people don't know that any petroleum based product, such as deodorant, or perfume, or hair jell, or for you gal's out there, makeup; can, and often does, spontaneously combust when contacted with oxygen. Remember, oxygen is one of the things which pilots get to play with at high altitudes.

Lots of cloth can produce static electricity. It's called a spark. Sparks of electricity and oxygen tend to go boom. Even if, it does not go boom, I personally don't care to experience an oxygen fire first hand. All this means, no books, no Kindle's or Nook's, no phones; just you, the TV outside the plastic tube you are locked into, and your thumbs to twiddle.

Everything goes OK for about a month. I'm getting better, the hole in my belly is getting smaller, then over the weekend I start to feel bad. Monday morning, I go into Wound Care, and they start to change the foam in my belly. The nurse has it off and is across the room preparing things to put the new stuff on me when I lightly cough.

I mean, it was a nothing cough, almost like clearing your throat. Clear fluid fly's out of my belly, all the way across the room, and hits the cabinets on the other side of the examining room six feet away. To make a long story short, it's back to the hospital for a third surgery in a two month period.

This surgery is supposed to be a little thing. All they need to do is clear the pocket of fluid and close off the pocket. Yea right!

This is the third serious surgery I have in a two month period. The first surgery, second surgery to me, the doctor did not take out all of the mesh. I had been under the impression, based on what he had said, that all of it had been removed the first time. There is a serious infection in my belly. The source you ask? The mess which had been left in my belly.

I get to start over with the Wound Vac and Wound Care.

All this started around the Fourth of July and here it is two days before the beginning of November's Novel Writing Month challenge. My belly has a three-by-five piece of black foam on it, with a hose leading to a Wound Vac. The good news? The hole is no longer an inch and a half deep. It has filled in from the bottom up and now all I have to deal with is the surface hole, and hyperbolic five times a week.

I can't even write while I lay there, listening to the sound of pure oxygen blowing into the chamber. Twice a day I get to clear my ears from the pressure, once going up, and once going down. I hope I can keep up with my writing, and I wish, beyond all else, to git rid of this hole in my belly lousing that infernal pump hanging from my shoulder.

Lately I've been wondering if the Internet is responsible for a New Dark Ages descending upon mankind. Throughout history there have always been crazies around who preach destruction and death. In the past they would almost latterly stand on a soap box in the park and yell at the top of their lungs to everybody within the sound of their voices. Some of these people seemed quite lucid while most simply raved.
Today, due to the Internet, these crazies who were mostly ignored in the past now have a world wide pulpit to connect them to other crazies. Take what is happening now in Wisconsin. I don't care if you support the governor and the republicans or appose them and support the democrats. You definitely have the right to do either of these two things. However, the crazies who in the past were restricted in how much damage they could do by the distance their voice travels are now posting things on the Internet like "all crazies wanted, must have gun, training as sniper preferred; target Scott Walker." I'm sorry but to me that sounds like incitement to murder.
The unfortunate fact is that unless you name one particular individual, in this country you will almost never be prosecuted in conjunction with a murder by calling for one. The crazies who yell things like that are generally to cowardly to do any of these things themselves and are generally too stupid to understand the effect of their snout on the mind of some disturbed individual.
I don't know what may set the next crazy with a twenty two pistol off. I do remember several instances of something like this occurring. Remember a fellow named John Hinkley? All it took for him to try to kill the President was the thought that it would impress Jody Foster. There are even a few crazies out there who think that Jody Foster is responsible because she did not give in to Hinkleys advances. (I think that is just as nuts as the nut balls who are sending the death threats to Governor Walker.)
The fact is, those nuts are almost guaranteed to shoot themselves in the foot. If some crazy does take a shot at Walker, the back lash against the unions is going to be viscous. These people have never really studied history. All they have ever done is to look at the sanitized version of history written after the fact. I will give a few examples below.
First let's talk about the most famous assassination in modern times. I'm talking about the death of John F. Kennedy. For those of you who were not alive in 1963 the political reality was not what most historians try to paint for you., Kennedy was not a popular president. The simple fact was that without Lyndon Johnson he would have never been elected to his first term and in the interim he had alienated Johnson and a large number of the voters who did vote for him. Then along comes Dallas, Texas. After the assassination John Kennedy became the matter who stood for everything which was right about America. First he was a champion of civil rights then there was the moon program, etc, etc, etc. Now for a reality check. EVERY piece of civil rights legislation attributed to Kennedy was actually passed under Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy was dead. As for the moon landing, Kennedy asked Johnson to research what the country could do to get ahead of the Russians in space and Johnson suggested going to the moon by the end of the decade. Kennedy did make the speech.
Now look a little farther back in history, say to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Serbian separatists believed that they could force Astrio-Hungarian Monarchy to grant freedom to Serbia. The result was a little temper tantrum called World War I. Serbia did not get what they tried to force with their stupid assassination attempt even though they were on the winning side of World War I. To much of Europe knew who had fired the first shots and why. Think it was over quickly, search for the Bosnian war in the 1990's. Now for one last example. In ancient Rome there once was an Emperor named Caligula. Caligula was a mad man. That is perhaps the nicest thing which can be said of him. I won't go into the depth of his depravity but when he was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guard Rome breathed a sigh of relief. After all Claudius was a descent Emperor. The problem came in with Claudius's successor. I will give the name here. I think you may have heard it. In a way this one name made Caligula seem almost tame. That name? Nero!
Occasionally I hear some idiot wishing an assassination would kill the President, which president; you add the name of the last several I've heard nuts calling for each and every one of them to be killed. Every time I hear this I say, 'God no, all you will do is turn him into a mortar.' The reality is, if you want to turn any President you hate into the greatest President in history and make sure that every piece of legislation he ever spouted really does happen regardless of how much harm it will do or how much it violated our own Constitution, try duplicating Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald changed the world. It's just that he did not change the world in the way he wanted to.
If you are thinking about posting what amounts to a death threat on the Internet, think about it. Some other nut may just post a threat on the Internet naming you a target. Think about having to live with the chance that some other nut, having read that request for a murder, may be waiting outside you door to kill you. Worse yet, they may shoot at you but hit one of your kids. The unfortunate fact is that the nut case who pulled the trigger is perhaps less guilty than the Internet nut who requested the kill to begin with. Unfortunately under the system of laws we live under that person is usually immune from prosecution. At least that is until one day when they have to answer for their crime standing at the feet of God.

     Several months ago a friend went to one of the hospitals in Dallas to have surgery. She needed to have her arteries cleared of the blockage which was slowly killing her. The surgeon did a very good job although the surgery was far more complex then he had believed it would be when he started. That was where things started to go wrong. 
     First the surgery was so complex and long that her body had swollen while she was under the knife and he decided to not close after the operation until some of the swelling had subsided. To enable this he decided to place her in a medically induced coma. I had never heard of this before but after an explanation of the reasons it seemed reasonable. After a few days the took her back into surgery and closed, then gradually woke her from her coma. Things were progressing nicely when the inevitable happened.
     A nurse in the hospital screwed up and gave her an overdose. Fortunately the discovery of the overdose happened very quickly, the miscreant nurse admitted rather than attempting to cover up the error. This meant that medical intervention for the overdose occurred very quickly. I can not blame the nurse as humans do make mistakes, it's how you correct your mistakes that is of most important, this nurse did very well in that respect.

     That overdose very nearly killed Donna and her recovery from that point was slow and very painful to her family. In fact it is the unfortunate truth that things simply went from bad to far worse. After a couple of weeks, the hospital had her strong enough that she could be moved to a facility which could provide rehabilitation therapy to help her recover from the effects of the combination of surgery and overdose by medical personnel. 
     In hind site it would have perhaps been better to allow the hospital in Dallas move her to a facility associated with them. Unfortunately Dallas is a long way from home. Home is in a small city a few miles north of the Oklahoma border with Texas. There was a facility  which was nationally famous and was in a town about seventy miles north from the Dallas hospital on US 69/75 and only about twenty miles south of home. (I refrain from naming names not because the facilities involved would have any leg to stand on in regard to their incompetence and malpractice but rather do to the fact that they all have lawyers on retainer ready to make life very expensive on anyone who has the audacity of pointing a finger at their incompetence, negligence and malicious intent.)
     Once Donna was ensconced in that world famous facility (unfortunately not hyperbole) things rapidly got worse. For the first couple of days she was doing well and starting to recover her strength. She was up to being capable of performing several hours of exercise daily when suddenly she started to swell up very rapidly. One of the doctors associated with this so called (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation gave her a drug which she was allergic to. This allergy was on her medical record under, surprise surprise, allergies but instead of looking at said medical record he asked a woman who was in severe pain and still confused slightly from the month long ordeal she had undergone if she was allergic to some long medical name for a particular sulfa drug. Donna is allergic to sulfa drugs. I wonder just how many people other than doctors would recognize the name of a pain medication as being a member of the sulfa family of drugs. This allergic reaction landed her in the hospital associated with that so called (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation with severe swelling.
     Now is where Obama care kicked in. Due to changes in Medicare which were precipitated due to Obama care, just over two weeks after the hospital sent her back to the (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation  they sent her home as Medicare only pay for a set number of days of Rehabilitation regardless of the severity of the problem involved. If you think I exaggerate, the family was informed two weeks before her discharge date of the date she would be discharged. My question is how can a real medical professional know the condition of a patient two weeks before the date in question. It sounds more like a bureaucrat made an arbitrary decision and to heck with the medical realities. (Thank you most assuredly Mr. President.) So here we are, Donna is at home and her husband must hire someone to come in and help him with her, also not paid for by Medicare, because the changes that have been made in the health care system prevent real care from being given. 
     One more thing you need to know about Donna, she has sleep apnea. Without her CPAP machine she may stop breathing at night. This is also on her medical records. At home she has a machine, however after only one day at home the nurse who was caring for her informed her husband that she needed to be in the hospital due to her breathing.
     Unfortunately he took her back to the hospital which had discharged her to the (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation and the emergency room admitted her where an incompetent doctor who's name unfortunately sounds very much like my last name, I personally guarantee that there is no relation, discharged her without telling the ward nurses or her husband. Charles then spent several hours arguing with the medical staff that she needed oxygen and that she should be on monitors to make sure that she was not having problems breathing. Yes the alert hospital staff was refusing a woman with breathing problems access to oxygen. (Please don't get me started on incompetent doctors denying oxygen to patients who are having difficulty breathing.)
     After almost twelve hours they promised him that she would be placed on monitors as they kicked him off the floor stating that visiting hours were over. What happened next, in my opinion, was tantamount to attempted murder. She was not placed on the promised monitor and she was left unattended in the hospital room. Sometime during three hours she was left unattended and without monitor she stopped breathing. This is not all that unusual in persons with sleep apnea. As soon as she was found they coded her and shocked her and brought her back. That was almost two months ago and she is still in a coma.
     I devoutly wish that I could tell you that that was the end but it is not. The hospital send out an administrator to "ASSIST THE FAMILY". Normally one might assume that a hospital administrator would have some training in medicine. I learned differently. This (unnamed) female administrator in a very expensive business suite was an attorney, although she never told anyone that. We were tipped off anonymously by one of the nurses who thought that the hospital was not performing to the standards required for a legitimate hospital in the United States of America.  Within days of the, unfortunate incident, she had called in all of the family and attempted to convince them to pull the plug. As it was a lawyer who called them in I feel sure that it was more legally motivated in protecting the hospital than medically indicated by Dona's condition.
     I should note that this same administrator has attempted to convince Charles to allow a feeding tube to be inserted into her belly against the advise of the surgeon who would be required to do the job. Turns out that there was a good chance that the insertion of the tube would be fatal due to a previous belly surgery that Donna had had. This was why the doctor did not want to do the surgery and it makes one wonder if that was not the reason that the laywer protecting the hospital wanted it done. After all if she dies during a procedure authorized by her husband there is no medical liability for the hospital.
     Since that time the staff of the hospital has, first informed the family that they will pay for all medical bills which ecru in the hospital and have given assurances that Donna is receiving the best care possible. Strangely during this time they have pulled every trick they can think of to prevent her being move to another,. perhaps, more compliant medical facility. They blocked outside consultations by other neurologists and at this point are trying to force the family to move Donna to a "long term facility".
     Now things get even more interesting. It appears that a few years ago the hospitals and doctors in the state of Texas lobbied the state legislator to allow them to write the tort reform bill which was placed on medical malpractice in the state of Texas. In Texas there is no limit on the judgment of medical expenses granted in a law suit but there is a three hundred thousand dollar limit on pain and suffering and there are no legal expenses allowed. This means that all costs related to the law suit must come out of the three hundred thousand pain and suffering portion of the suit. These costs include you lawyers, expert witness as to the malpractice involved, investigators even transportation and lodging for witness. The hospital on the other hand has lawyers on staff who deal with the annoyance of a pesky law suit without any additional cost to the hospital. In addition the for every thousand dollars billed on your hospital bill the actual cost will vary, depending on exactly the type of service involved, from five to ten dollars.
     Don't believe me? Look at this example then.
     (hospital staff is calculated in positions not persons)    One Hospital Ward  Patients   20    @1500 per Day    30000                             RN    1    @720 per day 720                            LPN    1   @480 per day  480                        Orderly    1   @240 per day  240                    Housekeeper    1   @30 per day    30 NOTE:               (figure 3 hours per ward per day)      Power and other utilities   20  @10 per patient    200              Cleaning supplies                       10                         (generous to hospital)
       Drugs:    for hospital 200 : Patient    10000 (as billed)

          Patient cost = 40000   billed per patient day 20000         Hospital cost = 1880     cost per patient day  94
     Sure there are a few other costs but with this accounting to less than 1% of the billed amount I don't think that the large corporations which own the hospitals are hurting very much.  When the average business has a margin of 50% gross and one of the big box stores may have 75%, I think 90% plus is more than sufficient margin for them to pay for the lights and garbage. OH wait I included the electric bill and garbage in the bills above, how silly of me. This is especially true in a state like Texas where the cost of Malpractice Insurance is negligible due to the tort legislation which is so totally one sided in favor of the hospital. One of these days I may talk a little about the real reason that things are so expensive in this day and age: INSURANCE, but I degress.
     What is even more annoying is that hospitals like the one which must remain unnamed but happens to be in a city approximately seventy miles north of Dallas and is associated with the world famous (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation have the ability to hide behind this tort reform to commit what is in a very real since murder. I am certain that Donna is not the first victim of their incompetence, or in this case perhaps, malicious intent due to the attitude of the attending doctor and the nurses on duty.
     One other damming point about that hospital. Charles almost immediately demanded that the doctor involved be removed from her case. If he had known who that doctor was, that doctor had been assigned to her case by the hospital behind Charles back without consulting him, he would not have allowed the arrogant idiot withing a mile of her as she had had problems with him the year before. The hospital administrators, remember she is a lawyer but she was hiding this small fact at the time, reaction was that that was "Very serious and would be detrimental to the doctor involved." Note the extreme care for the patient and her family. There was absolutely no regard for Donna or Charles only for the fact that it would besmirch the reputation of the doctor involved to have it appear on the medical record that he had been removed from a case. When Charles was insistent she finally agreed to his removal. She lied. He was not removed as her primary care doctor. Charles once again upon seeing this doctors name on the board in her room demanded, for more diplomatically than I would have been capable of, that he be removed. Again the lawyer lied and said that she would personally see to his removal. The next day when we returned he was still the doctor of record. There was a very long discussion with the lawyer again to which I listened attentively.
     I should mention at this point that Charles would make Dale Carnage blush when it comes to persuasion. He never once raised his voice or parted from the reasonable tone he used to once again demand that the doctor who was in large part responsible for Dona's condition was not suited to be her doctor. He never once mentioned the things which were running through my mind that that arrogant piece of work would conspire with this female who was trying to dazzle Charles with BS while she shifted her legs trying to give me a look up her skirt hoping to distract my train of thought and making sure that she shifted her body so as to present the most favorable view of her low cut top under her business suit. I had to wonder if perhaps her primary occupation did not involve more than the practice of law.
     Not once during all of this had he mentioned lawyers to the hospital or to their pet lawyer, although he had been discussing the condition of his wife with one of his friends who just happens to be one of the very best attorneys in the country. It was Dan who informed him of the condition of Texas medical tort perversion which protected the doctors and hospitals and allowed the victims of their malpractice to assume the position they deserved in the eyes of the hospitals. That position being surf to be stomped on and forced into slave labor to supply their masters with everything their bolted egos could desire. (No before you ask, Dan does not practice malpractice law or criminal law. Knowing Dan as well as I do, I think that both of these are just a bit too dirty for his tastes. Dan is, after all something of an enigma. He is an honest lawyer. He is also a very good lawyer as has been learned the hard way by his opponents.)
     As to date, the hospital is still fighting allowing Donna to be moved to a component hospital which does not have a vested interest in her dying and circling there wagons to try to prevent any legal action against them by the family. I should state that this does involve the mysterious disappearance of hospital records and I have to wonder if a few more of them have not been modified?
     The bottom line is that in todays world, doctors no longer work for themselves. All of them work for the corporations and these corporations are intent on the dollars in your pocket and not on the quality of the medical care they provide. I fear that if you truly look at the rising cost of health care, nine out of every ten dollars of the cost is either fraudulent charges or massively inflated over charges. Think about it, a doctor visit today varies from one hundred to two hundred dollars, most paid by insurance but still paid. This visit consists of your showing up on or before time for your appointment at the doctors office and usually having to wait from one to three hours past the time of the apartment to actually see the doctor. The actual medical visit will be approximatel one minute of paper work followed by less than two minutes with a nurse and after another wait maybe ten minutes with a doctor for about one minute then the one minute of paper work required for you to pay for the doctors services. I don't know about you but one of my doctors treats about a one hundred patients a day plus hospital visits in addition to this. Last time I checked my math that comes out to a total of Twenty thousand dollars a day for less than three and one half hours of work. It's no wonder that I have literally seen doctors offices have Brinks trucks pull up to transport the deposit. Who else do you know that makes over six thousand dollars per hour.
     Perhaps I should point out one more small point. Almost none of the doctors in town actually get that kind of pay day. All of them work for the corporation which owns the hospital. As employees of the corporation they receive a salary, a rather good one, and receive benefits such as medical and malpractice insurance paid for by the corporation. It is the corporation which is making the six thousand dollars per hour. I wonder what it really costs them?
     OH well, where else could I have had a hotel room which cost nine thousand dollars a day than the local hospital. At that price I could almost afford the Imperial Suite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris.

     Several months ago a friend went to one of the hospitals in Dallas to have surgery. She needed to have her arteries cleared of the blockage which was slowly killing her. The surgeon did a very good job although the surgery was far more complex then he had believed it would be when he started. That was where things started to go wrong. 
     First the surgery was so complex and long that her body had swollen while she was under the knife and he decided to not close after the operation until some of the swelling had subsided. To enable this he decided to place her in a medically induced coma. I had never heard of this before but after an explanation of the reasons it seemed reasonable. After a few days the took her back into surgery and closed, then gradually woke her from her coma. Things were progressing nicely when the inevitable happened.
     A nurse in the hospital screwed up and gave her an overdose. Fortunately the discovery of the overdose happened very quickly, the miscreant nurse admitted rather than attempting to cover up the error. This meant that medical intervention for the overdose occurred very quickly. I can not blame the nurse as humans do make mistakes, it's how you correct your mistakes that is of most important, this nurse did very well in that respect.

     That overdose very nearly killed Donna and her recovery from that point was slow and very painful to her family. In fact it is the unfortunate truth that things simply went from bad to far worse. After a couple of weeks, the hospital had her strong enough that she could be moved to a facility which could provide rehabilitation therapy to help her recover from the effects of the combination of surgery and overdose by medical personnel. 
     In hind site it would have perhaps been better to allow the hospital in Dallas move her to a facility associated with them. Unfortunately Dallas is a long way from home. Home is in a small city a few miles north of the Oklahoma border with Texas. There was a facility  which was nationally famous and was in a town about seventy miles north from the Dallas hospital on US 69/75 and only about twenty miles south of home. (I refrain from naming names not because the facilities involved would have any leg to stand on in regard to their incompetence and malpractice but rather do to the fact that they all have lawyers on retainer ready to make life very expensive on anyone who has the audacity of pointing a finger at their incompetence, negligence and malicious intent.)
     Once Donna was ensconced in that world famous facility (unfortunately not hyperbole) things rapidly got worse. For the first couple of days she was doing well and starting to recover her strength. She was up to being capable of performing several hours of exercise daily when suddenly she started to swell up very rapidly. One of the doctors associated with this so called (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation gave her a drug which she was allergic to. This allergy was on her medical record under, surprise surprise, allergies but instead of looking at said medical record he asked a woman who was in severe pain and still confused slightly from the month long ordeal she had undergone if she was allergic to some long medical name for a particular sulfa drug. Donna is allergic to sulfa drugs. I wonder just how many people other than doctors would recognize the name of a pain medication as being a member of the sulfa family of drugs. This allergic reaction landed her in the hospital associated with that so called (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation with severe swelling.
     Now is where Obama care kicked in. Due to changes in Medicare which were precipitated due to Obama care, just over two weeks after the hospital sent her back to the (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation  they sent her home as Medicare only pay for a set number of days of Rehabilitation regardless of the severity of the problem involved. If you think I exaggerate, the family was informed two weeks before her discharge date of the date she would be discharged. My question is how can a real medical professional know the condition of a patient two weeks before they date in question. It sounds more like a bureaucrat made an arbitrary decision and to heck with the medical realities. (Thank you most assuredly Mr. President.) So here we are, Donna is at home and her husband must hire someone to come in and help him with her, also not paid for by Medicare, because the changes that have been made in the health care system prevent real care from being given. 
     One more thing you need to know about Donna, she has sleep apnea. Without her CPAP machine she may stop breathing at night. This is also on her medical records. At home she has a machine, however after only one day at home the nurse who was caring for her informed her husband that she needed to be in the hospital due to her breathing.
     Unfortunately he took her back to the hospital which had discharged her to the (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation and the emergency room admitted her where an incompetent doctor who's name unfortunately sounds very much like my last name, I personally guarantee that there is no relation, discharged her without telling the ward nurses or her husband. Charles then spent several hours arguing with the medical staff that she needed oxygen and that she should be on monitors to make sure that she was not having problems breathing. Yes the alert hospital staff was refusing a woman with breathing problems access to oxygen. (Please don't get me started on incompetent doctors denying oxygen to patients who are having difficulty breathing.)
     After almost twelve hours they promised him that she would be placed on monitors as they kicked him off the floor stating that visiting hours were over. What happened next, in my opinion, was tantamount to attempted murder. She was not placed on the promised monitor and she was left unattended in the hospital room. Sometime during three hours she was left unattended and without monitor she stopped breathing. This is not all that unusual in persons with sleep apnea. As soon as she was found they coded her and shocked her and brought her back. That was almost two months ago and she is still in a coma.
     I devoutly wish that I could tell you that that was the end but it is not. The hospital send out an administrator to "ASSIST THE FAMILY". Normally one might assume that a hospital administrator would have some training in medicine. I learned differently. This (unnamed) female administrator in a very expensive business suite was an attorney, although she never told anyone that. We were tipped off anonymously by one of the nurses who thought that the hospital was not performing to the standards required for a legitimate hospital in the United States of America.  Within days of the, unfortunate incident, she had called in all of the family and attempted to convince them to pull the plug. As it was a lawyer who called them in I feel sure that it was more legally motivated in protecting the hospital than medically indicated by Dona's condition.
     I should note that this same administrator has attempted to convince Charles to allow a feeding tube to be inserted into her belly against the advise of the surgeon who would be required to do the job. Turns out that there was a good chance that the insertion of the tube would be fatal due to a previous belly surgery that Donna had had. This was why the doctor did not want to do the surgery and it makes one wonder if that was not the reason that the laywer protecting the hospital wanted it done. After all if she dies during a procedure authorized by her husband there is no medical liability for the hospital.
     Since that time the staff of the hospital has, first informed the family that they will pay for all medical bills which ecru in the hospital and have given assurances that Donna is receiving the best care possible. Strangely during this time they have pulled every trick they can think of to prevent her being move to another,. perhaps, more compliant medical facility. They blocked outside consultations by other neurologists and at this point are trying to force the family to move Donna to a "long term facility".
     Now things get even more interesting. It appears that a few years ago the hospitals and doctors in the state of Texas lobbied the state legislator to allow them to write the tort reform bill which was placed on medical malpractice in the state of Texas. In Texas there is no limit on the judgment of medical expenses granted in a law suit but there is a three hundred thousand dollar limit on pain and suffering and there are no legal expenses allowed. This means that all costs related to the law suit must come out of the three hundred thousand pain and suffering portion of the suit. These costs include you lawyers, expert witness as to the malpractice involved, investigators even transportation and lodging for witness. The hospital on the other hand has lawyers on staff who deal with the annoyance of a pesky law suit without any additional cost to the hospital. In addition the for every thousand dollars billed on your hospital bill the actual cost will vary, depending on exactly the type of service involved, from five to ten dollars.
     Don't believe me? Look at this example then.
     (hospital staff is calculated in positions not persons)    One Hospital Ward  Patients   20    @1500 per Day    30000                             RN    1    @720 per day 720                            LPN    1   @480 per day  480                        Orderly    1   @240 per day  240                    Housekeeper    1   @30 per day    30 NOTE:               (figure 3 hours per ward per day)      Power and other utilities   20  @10 per patient    200              Cleaning supplies                       10                         (generous to hospital)
       Drugs:    for hospital 200 : Patient    10000 (as billed)

          Patient cost = 40000   billed per patient day 20000         Hospital cost = 1880     cost per patient day  94
     Sure there are a few other costs but with this accounting to less than 1% of the billed amount I don't thing that the large corporations which own the hospitals are hurting very much.  When the average business has a margin of 50% gross and one of the big box stores may have 75%, I think 90% plus is more than sufficient margin for them to pay for the lights and garbage. OH wait I included the electric bill and garbage in the bills above, how silly of me. This is especially true in a state like Texas where the cost of Malpractice Insurance is negligible due to the tort legislation which is so totally one sided in favor of the hospital. One of these days I may talk a little about the real reason that things are so expensive in this day and age: INSURANCE, but I degress.
     What is even more annoying is that hospitals like the one which must remain unnamed but happens to be in a city approximately seventy miles north of Dallas and is associated with the world famous (blank blank) Center for Rehabilitation have the ability to hide behind this tort reform to commit what is in a very real since murder. I am certain that Donna is not the first victim of their incompetence, or in this case perhaps, malicious intent due to the attitude of the attending doctor and the nurses on duty.
     One other damming point about that hospital. Charles almost immediately demanded that the doctor involved be removed from her case. If he had known who that doctor was, that doctor had been assigned to her case by the hospital behind Charles back without consulting him, he would not have allowed the arrogant idiot withing a mile of her as she had had problems with him the year before. The hospital administrators, remember she is a lawyer but she was hiding this small fact at the time, reaction was that that was "Very serious and would be detrimental to the doctor involved." Note the extreme care for the patient and her family. There was absolutely no regard for Donna or Charles only for the fact that it would besmirch the reputation of the doctor involved to have it appear on the medical record that he had been removed from a case. When Charles was insistent she finally agreed to his removal. She lied. He was not removed as her primary care doctor. Charles once again upon seeing this doctors name on the board in her room demanded, for more diplomatically than I would have been capable of, that he be removed. Again the lawyer lied and said that she would personally see to his removal. The next day when we returned he was still the doctor of record. There was a very long discussion with the lawyer again to which I listened attentively.
     I should mention at this point that Charles would make Dale Carnage blush when it comes to persuasion. He never once raised his voice or parted from the reasonable tone he used to once again demand that the doctor who was in large part responsible for Dona's condition was not suited to be her doctor. He never once mentioned the things which were running through my mind that that arrogant piece of work would conspire with this female who was trying to dazzle Charles with BS while she shifted her legs trying to give me a look up her skirt hoping to distract my train of thought and making sure that she shifted her body so as to present the most favorable view of her low cut top under her business suit. I had to wonder if perhaps her primary occupation did not involve more than the practice of law.
     Not once during all of this had he mentioned lawyers to the hospital or to their pet lawyer, although he had been discussing the condition of his wife with one of his friends who just happens to be one of the very best attorneys in the country. It was Dan who informed him of the condition of Texas medical tort perversion which protected the doctors and hospitals and allowed the victims of their malpractice to assume the position they deserved in the eyes of the hospitals. That position being surf to be stomped on and forced into slave labor to supply their masters with everything their bolted egos could desire. (No before you ask, Dan does not practice malpractice law or criminal law. Knowing Dan as well as I do, I think that both of these are just a bit too dirty for his tastes. Dan is, after all something of an enigma. He is an honest lawyer. He is also a very good lawyer as has been learned the hard way by his opponents.)
     As to date, the hospital is still fighting allowing Donna to be moved to a component hospital which does not have a vested interest in her dying and circling there wagons to try to prevent any legal action against them by the family. I should state that this does involve the mysterious disappearance of hospital records and I have to wonder if a few more of them have not been modified?
     The bottom line is that in today world, doctors no longer work for themselves. All of them work for the corporations and these corporations are intent on the dollars in your pocket and not on the quality of the medical care they provide. I fear that if you truly look at the rising cost of health care, nine out of every ten dollars of the cost is either fraudulent charges or massively inflated over charges. Think about it, a doctor visit today varies from one hundred to two hundred dollars, most paid by insurance but still paid. This visit consists of your showing up on or before time for your appointment at the doctors office and usually having to wait from one to three hours past the time of the apartment to actually see the doctor. The actual medical visit will be approximatel1 one minute of paper work followed by less than two minutes with a nurse and after another wait maby two minutes with a doctor then the one minute of paper work required for you to pay for the doctors services. I don't know about you but one of my doctors treats about a one hundred patients a day plus hospital visits in addition to this. Last time I checked my math that comes out to a total of Twenty thousand dollars a day for less than three and one half hours of work. It's no wonder that I have literally seen doctors offices have Brinks trucks pull up to transport the deposit. Who else do you know that makes over six thousand dollars per hour.
     Perhaps I should point out one more small point. Almost none of the doctors in town actually get that kind of pay day. All of them work for the corporation which owns the hospital. As employees of the corporation they receive a salary, a rather good one, and receive benefits such as medical and malpractice insurance paid for by the corporation. It is the corporation which is making the six thousand dollars per hour. I wonder what it really costs them?
     OH well, where else could I have had a hotel room which cost nine thousand dollars a day than the local hospital. At that price I could almost afford the Imperial Suite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris.

     I guess I'm a better reader than I am a writer. After a few hours of staring at the screen I find that I can no longer concentrate on the task at hand and need to allow my mind time to unwind a bit. Lately I find that leads me to Kindle at Amazon.
     No I don't think that that electronic reader is better or worse than any other, it's just that often I find myself wanting something new to read and not wanting to wait the several days it takes to get the paper and ink version of the work. I find a lot of very interesting things that way. One of my recent finds was Nathan Lowell.
     Most of my writing is of a highly technical nature. In the last year or so I have started to write other types of work simply as a relief to the grind of producing systems manuals. I work on manuals for a while then try to work on some of my other books but still I find that the little critters inside my head crave the sustenance of other peoples work. When I was a child I found Heinlein and Orwell. Later I found other authors and other types of books.
     I think that just as our belly needs food, our mind needs the food found in the words and stories of other people. The mind craves being led down the decks of a whaling ship with Ishmael while Ahab's obsession with the white whale drives the ship and crew onwards. Interestingly enough however, it is almost never the book with a good story and shallow characters you remember. Think about it. When I say Robinson Crusoe don't you see the raggedy old man walking alone down the beach with his foot prints in the sand behind him. For those of you who have read Nathan Lowell's Quarter Share don't you just see Ish being watched by three very sexy ladies, or perhaps I should say four, as he is fitted for his new wardrobe.
     Fiction is indeed the food of our minds. As long as there continue to be new chefs such as Mr. Lowell the future is a less scary place.

     I guess I'm a better reader than I am a writer. After a few hours of staring at the screen I find that I can no longer concentrate on the task at hand and need to allow my mind time to unwind a bit. Lately I find that leads me to Kindle at Amazon.

     No I don't think that that electronic reader is better or worse than any other, it's just that often I find myself wanting something new to read and not wanting to wait the several days it takes to get the paper and ink version of the work. I find a lot of very interesting things that way. One of my recent finds was Nathan Lowell.

     Most of my writing is of a highly technical nature. In the last year or so I have started to write other types of work simply as a relief to the grind of producing systems manuals. I work on manuals for a while then try to work on some of my other books but still I find that the little critters inside my head crave the sustenance of other peoples work. When I was a child I found Heinlein and Orwell. Later I found other authors and other types of books.

     I think that just as our belly needs food, our mind needs the food found in the words and stories of other people. The mind craves being led down the decks of a whaling ship with Ishmael while Ahab's obsession with the white whale drives the ship and crew onwards. Interestingly enough however, it is almost never the book with a good story and shallow characters you remember. Think about it. When I say Robinson Crusoe don't you see the raggedy old man walking alone down the beach with his foot prints in the sand behind him. For those of you who have read Nathan Lowell's Quarter Share don't you just see Ish being watched by three very sexy ladies, or perhaps I should say four, as he is fitted for his new wardrobe.

     Fiction is indeed the food of our minds. As long as there continue to be new chefs such as Mr. Lowell the future is a less scary place.

Hate to say it but just now I'm feeling just a bit like Ebeneezer Scrooge pre Marley's ghost. It's not the true spirit of the holiday that makes me feel this way it's the big-box stores. Here it is, the Monday after Christmas, and I'm already dreading when the big-box stores, you know who you are so I will not point fingers, will decide that Christmas is started. With more than a bit of dread, I'm wondering if this year, they will really wait, until after January 1, to put out the Christmas Trees. I get a little sick of hearing "Chestnut's Roasting on an open fire" for the ten millionth time.

Take, for example, the currently dying year. At least one of the local big box store had its Christmas Trees out before the 4th of July. To them little inconsequential things like Thanksgiving and the 4th of July and to a lesser extent even Halloween were simply not important and were better ignored by the ignorant masses who depended on giving them their hard earned funds for what ever crumbs they, meaning the stores, decided to permit them to buy.

It seems that we, and I definitely include myself in the unwashed masses that the elitists who manage these chain stores mean when they deign to permit us their largess, are not considered quite intelligent enough to come in out of the rain much less actually understand when a holiday such as Christmas should begin. Our task is simply to salivate over the rude crumbs they decide to permit us to spend money on while they simply laugh at us all the way to the bank.

What is worse still is that they have somehow convinced the majority of the people that they, meaning the big stores, are Tiny Tim and that we the dirty rabble they permit to have their largess are actually Ebeneezer Scrooge and  have to be shown every year just how much how long and how early we must give to small, helpless, corporate, Tiny Tim.

I would try to leave you with a word of cheer, but as it seems am become Ebeneezer, I leave you instead with the words of the great corporate Tiny Tim

God bless the dollars and dimes. God bless them, every one!

     Hate to say it but just now I'm feeling just a bit like Ebeneezer Scrooge pre Marley's ghost. It's not the true spirit of the holiday that makes me feel this way it's the big box stores. Here it is the Monday after Christmas and I'm already dreading when the big box stores, you know who you are so I won't point fingers, decide that Christmas is started. With more than a bit of dread I'm wondering if this year, they will really wait until after January 1 to put out the Christmas Trees and start playing "Chestnut's Roasting on an open fire" for the ten millionth time.     Take for example the currently dying year. At least one of the local big box stores had their Christmas Trees out before the 4th of July. To them little inconsequential things like Thanksgiving and the 4th of July and to a lesser extent even Halloween were simply not important and were better ignored by the ignorant masses who depended on giving them their hard earned funds for what ever crumbs they, meaning the stores, decided to permit them to buy.     It seems that we, and I definitely include myself in the unwashed masses that the elitists who manage these chain stores mean when they deign to permit us their largess, are not considered quite intelligent enough to come in out of the rain much less to actually understand when a holiday such as Christmas should begin. Our task is to simply salivate over the rude crumbs they decide to permit us to spend hard earned money on while they simply laugh at us all the way to the bank.     What is worse still is that they have somehow convinced the majority of the people that they, meaning the big stores, are Tiny Tim and that we the dirty rabble they permit to have their largess are actually Ebeneezer Scrooge and  have to be shown every year just how much how long and how early we must give to small helpless, corporate, Tiny Tim.     I would try to leave you with a word of cheer but as I it seem am become Ebeneezer, I leave you instead with the words of the great corporate Tiny Tim
God bless the dollars and dimes.

Once upon a time not so very long ago, someone invented, H.I.V.R. and the world was good. People answered the telephone, and H.I.V.R. was used as it was intended to be used, to help you if all humans were already talking on the phone. H.I.V.R. was used to allow you to leave a message for someone who was away from their desk and to allow you to connect to someone else who perhaps was at their desk without the need of hanging up and calling again. Then the BEAN COUNTERS got their grubby hands on it, and the world has been a darker place ever since.

Just what do I mean by BEAN COUNTERS? Perhaps the best definition of BEAN COUNTER goes something like this:

BEAN COUNTER,  noun (descriptive noun) A bean counter is an illiterate antisocial accountant who is incapable of interpersonal relations with other people and desires that all other people in the world be made to conform to their belief system. They have no regard for the rights of others when profit is to be made and believe lying, cheating and stealing are correct and proper business practices just as long as these practices produce profit for them or their company. These same individuals regard as the ultimate evil anyone who attempts to use their methods against them. PS Please do not confuse BEAN COUNTERS with legitimate accountants. Most accounts are decent people who are simply trying to make a living and see to it that the people they work for are not cheated by the government.

As an example, quite a few years ago there was a family owned coffee company. (Please note that I do not name that family owned company as this would identify the company which we will discuss next.) This family owned company sold relatively decedent coffee (as good as it is possible to sell in mass market cans) and obviously made a reasonable profit as a much larger company purchased this company primarily for the name. The very fist thing that the larger companies BEAN COUNTERS did was cut the quality of the coffee beans used, change the grind so that they could place less coffee in the can and told the public that this new type of coffee grind made just as much as a pound of the old coffee. What they did not tell the public was the new coffee tasted like somebodies boiled socks.

What was the result? Coffee sales plummeted. The BEAN COUNTERS used low-quality beans and replaced those with even lower quality beans then ground it finer making the brew more  bitterly foul tasting. Today that once proud family coffee name is synonymous with crap coffee instead of quality coffee. PS: The moronic BEAN COUNTERS still do not understand and are trying to find crappier junk beans to offset the fact that fewer people can choke down their crap.

Now companies are doing the same thing with their telephone systems. I have to admit, I called a small company the other day and a human answered. I almost had a heart attack from the shock. Today in almost every case when you call a company which has more than, perhaps, a-dozen employees, the first thing you will always be required to talk to is their customer avoidance system. Why do I call them customer avoidance systems? Try calling you telephone provider or the cable company and time just how long it takes you to get to talk to a live human. Worse yet most of the time when you do eventually are connected, after going through at least five to ten levels of menu and wasting anywhere from five minutes to five hours of your personal time, you will be talking to someone from Bhopol or Kuala Lumpur instead of someone in the good old USA. Some companies are actually trying to charge you for the privilege of talking to a human.

Why is this happening? In very simple terms BEAN COUNTERS. In the opinion, of the BEAN COUNTERS who seem to congregate at the top of many large companies it simply cost's too much to waste time talking to a customer. They often believe it is far better to make, what they call customer service, as unusable as possible.

Want a few examples. If your telephone company overcharges you; you, will spend on the average of ten to twelve hours of your time trying to get this corrected. In most cases, you will be told that you must call a different department, no they can not transfer you, and when after several hours, sometimes  perhaps days, of waiting you will be told no; the department that sent you here will be the only one which can help you, so you need to call them back. WARNING: If you are five seconds late in paying them, they will turn your phone off! This is called customer service. PS to the WARNING If your phone is turned off for late pay; first you must pay the bill then the late fee then the late fee to the late fee the the reconnect fee then the late fee to the reconnect fee and then you must wait, usually, three to five days for your phone to be turned back on. Incidentally this DOES include the invalid charge, often bogus charge,  that you have been trying to get them to take off the bill.  (Yes, I am talking about one of the large phone companies, which due to the fact that they have attorneys on retainer, and I would be forced to hire an attorney to defend myself from them, must, unfortunately, remain unnamed.)

Unfortunately, much of this lies at the feet of the consumer as we tend to put up with this. Very few of us complain about this to the companies involved, partially because we believe perhaps correctly that the BEAN COUNTERS will ignore anything we say.

For those of you who do not believe, that you, yourself, are partially to blame for the condition of the customer avoidance systems in use today, I leave with this quote from what many people in the country think is one of our greater presidents.

"It is the duty of an elected official to ignore the will of the-people when he believes that the-people are wrong!" John F. Kennedy.

Perhaps the  proper paraphrase of PT Barnum?

"You CAN fool most of the people all of the time!"

     Once upon a time, not so very long ago, someone invented H.I.V.R. and the world was good. People answered the telephone and H.I.V.R. was used as it was intended to be used to help you if all humans were already talking on the phone. H.I.V.R. was used to allow you to leave a message for someone who was away from their desk and to allow you to connect to someone else who perhaps was at their desk without the need of hanging up and calling again. Then the BEAN COUNTERS got their grubby hands on it and the world has been a darker place ever since.     Just what do I mean by BEAN COUNTERS. Perhaps the best definition of BEAN COUNTER goes something like this:
BEAN COUNTER,  noun (descriptive noun) A bean counter is an illiterate antisocial accountant who is incapable of interpersonal relations with other people and desires that all other people in the world be made to conform to their belief system. They have no regard for the rights of others when profit is to be made and believe lying, cheating and stealing are correct and proper business practices just as long as these practices produce profit for them or their company. These same individuals regard as the ultimate evil anyone who attempts to use their methods against them. PS Please do not confuse BEAN COUNTERS with legitimate accountants. Most accounts are decent people who are simply trying to make a living and see to it that the people they work for are not cheated by the government.
     As an example, quite a few years ago there was a family owned coffee company. (Please note that I do not name that family owned company as this would identify the company which we will discuss next.) This family owned company sold relatively decedent coffee (as good as it is possible to sell in mass market cans) and obviously made a reasonable profit as a much larger company purchased this company primarily for the name. The very fist thing that the larger companies BEAN COUNTERS did was cut the quality of the coffee beans used, change the grind so that they could place less coffee in the can and told the public that this new type of coffee grind made just as much as a pound of the old coffee. What they did not tell the public was the new coffee tasted like somebodies boiled socks.     What was the result? Coffee sales plummeted, the BEAN COUNTERS used crapper and crapper beans and ground it finer making the brew more and more bitter and today that once proud family coffee name is synonymous with crap coffee instead of quality coffee. PS: The moronic BEAN COUNTERS still do not understand and are trying to find crappier junk beans to offset the fact that fewer people can choke down their crap.     Now companies are doing the same thing with their telephone systems. I have to admit, I called a small company the other day and a human answered. I almost had a heart attack from the shock. Today in almost every case when you call a company which has more than a dozen employees the first thing you will always be required to talk to is their customer avoidance system. Why do I call them customer avoidance systems? Try calling you telephone provider or the cable company and time just how long it takes you to get to talk to a live human. Worse yet most of the time when you do eventually are connected, after going through at least five to ten levels of menu and wasting anywhere from five minutes to five hours of your personal time, you will be talking to someone from Bhopol or Kuala Lumpur instead of someone in the good old USA. Some companies are actually trying to charge you for the privilege of talking to a human.
     Why is this happening. In very simple terms BEAN COUNTERS. In the opinion of the BEAN COUNTERS who seem to congregate at the top of many large companies it simply cost's too much to wast time talking to a customer. It is far better to make, what they call, customer service as unusable as possible.
     Want a few examples. If your telephone company overcharges you you will spend on the average of ten to twelve hours of your time trying to get this corrected. In most cases you will be told that you have to call a different department (no they can not transfer you) and when after several hours to perhaps days of waiting you will be told no the department that sent you here is the only one which can help you so you need to call them back. WARNING: If you are five seconds late in paying them they will turn your phone off! This is called customer service. PS to the WARNING If your phone is turned off for late pay; first you must pay the bill then the late fee then the late fee to the late fee the the reconnect fee then the late fee to the reconnect fee and then you must wait usually three to five days for your phone to be turned back on. (Yes I am talking about one of the large phone companies which do to the fact that they have attorneys on retainer and I would be forced to hire one to defend myself from them must, unfortunately, remain unnamed.) Incidentally this DOES include the invalid charge, often bogus charge,  that you have been trying to get them to take off the bill.
     Unfortunately much of this lies at the feet of the consumer as we tend to put up with this. Very few of us complain about this to the companies involved, partially because we believe perhaps correctly that the BEAN COUNTERS will ignore anything we say.
     For those of you who do not believe that you yourself are partially to blame for the condition of the customer avoidance systems in use today I leave with this quote from what many people in the country thing is one of our greater presidents.

"It is the duty of an elected official to ignore the will of the people when he believes that the people are wrong!" John F. Kennedy

Perhaps a more proper paraphrase of PT Barnum?

"You CAN fool most of the people all of the time!"