From inside the American healthcare behemoth

From Day One

If I were a healthcare facility

Then my first priority

Would be to provide good healthcare

Reads and sounds quite obvious, doesn’t it?

Put another way:

If I were a healthcare facility

Then my purpose, my duty,

Would be caring for the health of others

Put another way:

If I were a healthcare facility

Then every other responsibility

Would be secondary to that priority

So that if the pursuit of that priority

Were seduced by subordinate ends

I would no longer be 

A good healthcare facility

The seductions may seem important

And we may find every way to legitimize them

It sounds like this:

“Do you have insurance?”

“Will we meet our quota?”

“Can you fill out this survey?”

Seduction plays at our desire for simplicity:

“Focus on the bottom line”

It’s shielded with a facade of technicality:

“Optimize our revenue streams”

It makes repetition look like tradition:

“Your donations make a difference!”

If I were a patient

In a healthcare facility

In these United States

Then I’ve been failed

From day one

The Lotto

In a lake, hundreds of people are slowly drowning

Luckily, some were born good swimmers

Or born more buoyant

Regardless they’re all slowly drowning

There is a lifeguard on duty, however

But they have only the resources to save one small family

So each drowning person takes their shot:

They offer gifts and sweet words to the lifeguard

They offer what they cannot afford

They bargain for the one raft

That would lift them out of constant struggle

In the end, though, the lifeguard is impartial

Any small family can board the raft

And on that raft, they still might die

But at least they’ll be comfortable

You’re on a mountain overlooking the lake

You watch these people die, in pain and distress

You watch them use their last breaths

To plead to the lifeguard

For the one raft

And there, beyond the mountain and past the lake

You can see thousands of unused rafts

Out of reach yet almost within grasp

The lifeguard’s neutral grin cannot prevent

The curses you spit down at that lake

(A lottery machine in a hospital)

The Healthcare Hero

What about our society’s conception of a “hero”?

The one called a savior yet worked like a slave?

What about the dissonance between the decor of gratitude— 

“Thank you healthcare heroes!” on the front lawn— 

And the disgust at dissolving their debt— 

“Well who’s gonna pay for that?!”

Why are our heroes the ones who must be saved?

Because in America, we make them that way.