"More Hospitals Market to the Affluently Ill"

From AdAge: http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=48496

Growing numbers of hospitals now offer plush accomodations, designer robes, manicures and other hotel-like services.
The latest hotel amenities? Try the newest marketing ploys at your local hospital.

"Competitive market
In the increasingly competitive market for affluent patients, hospitals and medical centers are
not only touting their proven record of success and top-notch doctors, but their restaurant-quality food,
massages and rooms bigger than some hotel suites.
“Health care is competitive,” said Tomi Galin, spokeswoman for Franklin, Tenn.-based IASIS Healthcare Corp.,
which operates 15 hospitals. “In order to be competitive with other hospitals in the community, new hospitals
really have to step up the delivery of the environment.”

snip
At Phillips House, a separate wing of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, amenities include specially prepared meals,
interpreters, in-room refrigerators and international phone lines for guests who need them, among other things.
The hospital’s ads say, “For patients seeking the comfort and elegance characteristic of a fine hotel, the Phillips House is the ideal choice.
Each of our spacious private rooms and suites features elegant mahogany appointments and a variety of first-class services.”
Roosevelt Hospital in New York City offers 17 luxury rooms that feature marble bathrooms and unrestricted visiting hours.
Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey offers manicures for a fee. Each patient gets Nicole Miller-designed hospital-wear during their stay -- gratis."

The article goes on to say the fees paid by the wealthy for these luxury hospital accomodations and amenities, helps offset money-losers such as caring for those who can't afford to pay for medical treatment. Which at first seemed like a positive. But then I started thinking about how there are increasing numbers of working people who can't affort to pay for medical treatment, because of skyrocketing costs and fewer jobs that offer health benefits. So what this story really seems to illustrate is the growing disparity between rich and poor, a society that caters to the haves while more and more are pushed into the ranks of the have nots. The working class are supposed to be grateful that some rich person paying for "mahogany appointments" and designer robes, means that the hospital might be able to throw a few antibiotics in their direction or put a cast on their kid's broken arm.

edit to add quote marks

Always asking for things. *sigh*

is suffer in silence and not draw attention to themselves.

When my spouse was in the hospital after a car accident, I remember thinking "gee if only this room had a few mahogany appointments."
It might have compensated for the fact that the heart monitor they had him on kept sounding an alarm at random that his heart had stopped beating.
The device was given a cursory inspection, pronounced it to be malfunctioning, and then they showed him what button to push to disable the alarm.

I would have dealt better with 24 hours of that thing going off every 15 minutes if only I'd known that somewhere on the premises there were
patients in Nicole Miller robes nibbling on gourmet food while getting a massage.

And we even had fairly decent insurance. The poor people probably wouldn't have even been given a malfunctioning monitor, I guess they would have been
told to take their own pulse every 15 minutes to see if they were still alive.

Hope everything's OK now. :hug:

Hubby was given an epidural for pain from a broken pelvis and 6 ribs. They put him on the monitor as a precuation in case his heart stopped from the epidural is the way I understood it. A good idea in theory but since it was the little monitor that cried wolf, everyone got used to simply ignoring the alarm.

They also had him sharing a room with a very large, very confused man who kept defying orders and crawling out of bed until one day, he waddled across the room, parted his gown and daintily lowered his naked butt onto poor hubby's leg, the one that was attached to his broken pelvis. But at least this resulted in getting moved into a different room and escaping the guy's raving drunk adult son.

Oh there were other things, some of them too horrible to discuss in polite company since they involve, yes, an enema bag, but I'll leave it at that.
The upshot is that the contrast between the average person's hospital stay, and that of the more fortunate, is like the Sienfeld episode where Jerry and Elaine are flying first and second class. In this analogy though increasing numbers of people are privileged to be allowed in the luggage compartment.

After all, when the bird flu hits, they've got to find a way to keep themselves separate and healthy until it, and we, run the cycle.

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that wealthy people are more deserving of health care, at least don't drag Jesus into it.

I knew it was trying to spread enlightenment but it seemed to me it could have selected a rightwing forwarded email more appropriate to the thread.

Wow.

You would never be able to afford to live in the wealthy, gated community where John lives. And even if you decided you and your kids needed to get to work on some fruit trees, you would soon find that there is no one left who wants to sell fruit trees to you. They're all living it up behind the gate with John.

Nevermind that we in this country punish sick people to begin with, this just adds insult to injury. :-(