Greed, Crime, and Corruption . . .

. . . grieves a nation’s soul, and the USA is soul-sick.

Almost eight years back, we had a terrible socialized medical system forced upon us. Today, that rotten system is a real mess. People are forced by the government to purchase a substandard product/service . . . even if they can’t afford it (if they don’t purchase it they are heavily fined). The real problems with the system are:

1. The premiums are very expensive;
2. The deductible that must be met are much greater than the average person can pay;
3. The required coverages are crazy (sex change operations, prostate cancer coverage for women, breast cancer coverage for men, and it goes on and on); and
4. There is far too much government involvement.

The thing is such a mess and it seems that no one actually knows how to fix it. For eight years the Republicans have been crying foul and pleading with the voting public to empower them and they will kill the thing. That plea was answered and the Republicans now control both houses of Congress and the White House . . . yet, they are totally clueless, stalled, and the situation becomes more severe by the day.

Then, on Thursday morning, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, M.D., announced at a press conference the conclusion of a massive takedown operation by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, involving $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid billings. A nation struggling with how to assist citizens with accessing medical services now discovers that many of those who provide such services have been ripping off the system . . . terribly!

The sad truth is that by and large, most of those in the medical field who have been doing this cheating and stealing were already quite well off financially! Because of their foolish greed . . . many will be humiliated, convicted, punished, and stripped of their credentials and licenses. These are professionals who spent years of their lives studying and preparing for a career in medicine . . . and then threw it all away for something as simple as money.

Last week Sandy had a former student staying here as she tutored her for a college entrance exam. One morning the girl came out to the pool and hung out with me. The poor girl has had a pretty bad life up to this point, and Sandy is concerned that she is about to make a poor decision that will surely create more problems in the future. As we chatted, I challenged her to think about the two things in life that only she can give herself . . . and only she can steal from herself. She struggled with it for a while and finally said that she didn’t know what those two things were. I told her that they were: honor . . . and integrity!

It seems to me . . . that it one thing for this young girl from a terribly dysfunctional family (her parents went to prison for crimes they imposed upon the girl) to not yet know about honor and integrity, but it is a totally different matter for doctors not to comprehend it.

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