THOUGHTS OF A POET IN THE RAIN

What should I write about at 3:20 AM? Perhaps it is why I am awake. Well the plan was to be asleep. However, I am not. My wife will probably be out here in a minute or two with a disapproving look on her face, but it is what it is.

She has been sick, or perhaps it would be better to say that she has been in a great deal of pain since the middle of the night Wednesday. We went to the ER (emergency room) on Saturday more because of my being insistent than any other reason. They ran some tests, took blood, urine, blood pressure, oxygen level, you know, all the standard “we don’t know what is wrong with you tests but we gotta look like we know what we’re doing tests and comments.”

So, of course the winner is the hospital and the doctor because they will bill the insurance company (and us) some God awful amount of money for what little they did. I think that hospitals and doctors should get paid based on the reality that they accomplished something other than just looking like they accomplished something. If you hire a plumber they don’t come to the house and turn the water on, then flush the toilet, then go check the water meter, and then say, “Well, we checked this and that and we find you do have water, the toilet flushed, and the meter seems to be just fine so we don’t have any leaks, as far as that smell coming from the upstairs hall we think you have a dead mouse stuck in the wall. Here’s my bill.” Well, perhaps not to that extreme, but you get the point.  =