{"id":187116,"date":"2013-06-14T18:36:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T23:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/06\/14\/would-you-cut-someones-throat-for-money\/"},"modified":"2013-06-14T18:36:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T23:36:00","slug":"would-you-cut-someones-throat-for-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/06\/14\/would-you-cut-someones-throat-for-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Would You Cut Someone&#8217;s Throat for Money"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The hed is instructive, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-06-14\/chicago-hospital-accused-of-cutting-throats-for-160-000.html\"><b><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Chicago Hospital Accused of Cutting Throats for $160,000<\/span><\/b><\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When people talk about how the private sector solves everything, just remember this story:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A surgeon at Chicago\u2019s Sacred Heart Hospital cut a hole in Earl Nattee\u2019s throat on Jan. 3, the day before he died. It\u2019s not clear why.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The medical file contained no explanation of the need for the procedure, called a tracheotomy, according to a state and federal inspection report that quotes Sacred Heart\u2019s chief nursing officer as saying it happened \u201cout of the blue.\u201d Tracheotomies are typically used to open an air passage directly to the windpipe for patients who can\u2019t breathe otherwise.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Now, amid a federal investigation into allegations of unneeded tracheotomies at the hospital, Nattee\u2019s daughter, Antoinette Hayes, wonders whether her father was a pawn in what an FBI agent called a scheme to defraud Medicare and Medicaid.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cMy daddy said, \u2018They\u2019re killing me,\u2019\u201d Hayes recalled, in reference to the care he received at the hospital.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Based in part on surreptitious tape recordings, an FBI affidavit lays out allegations that a Sacred Heart pulmonologist kept patients too sedated to breathe on their own, then ordered unneeded tracheotomies for them &#8212; enabling the for-profit hospital to reap revenue of as much as $160,000 per case. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They have witnesses who wore wires, and a number of doctors, as well as the CEO of the for profit (notwithstanding the Catholic hospital sounding name) hospital.<\/p>\n<p>There is a reason why governments need to aggressively regulate, or operate, critical services, because incentives to produce good behavior are either ineffective, or more expensive than explicit regulation. <\/p>\n<p>H\/t JR at the <a href=\"http:\/\/stellarparthenon.org\/\">Stellar Parthenon BBS<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hed is instructive, &#8220;Chicago Hospital Accused of Cutting Throats for $160,000.&#8221; When people talk about how the private sector solves everything, just remember this story: A surgeon at Chicago\u2019s Sacred Heart Hospital cut a hole in Earl Nattee\u2019s throat on Jan. 3, the day before he died. It\u2019s not clear why.The medical file contained &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1074,1003,1150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-medical","category-philosophy","category-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}