Treating Sick Rich Folks

    "A hospital with a concierge? Yes. There's one called
    Eleven West, an exclusive wing of New York's Mount Sinai
    Medical Center."

By Jim Hightower Nation of Change March 5, 2012

http://www.nationofchange.org/treatingsickrichfolks1330964344

    The plutocratic elite is perverting health care into a
     luxury commodity.

In these trying times of health care austerity, it reaffirms
one's faith in humanity to learn that many hospitals are now
going the extra mile to provide top quality care for all.

For all superrich people that is. These folks are so rich
they can buy their way into "amenities units" built into
secluded sections of many hospitals. It's not medical care
that they're peddling to an elite clientele, but the personal
pampering that the superrich expect in all aspects of their
lives.

"I was supposed to be in Buenos Aires last week taking tango
lessons," a Wall Street executive explained matteroffactly to
a New York Times reporter, "but unfortunately, I hurt my
back, so I'm here with my concierge."A hospital with a
concierge? Yes. There's one called Eleven West, an exclusive
wing of New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center. "We pride
ourselves on getting anything the patient wants," beamed its
director of hospitality. "If they have a craving for lobster
tails and we don't have them on the menu, we'll go out and
get them."

From New York to Los Angeles, hospitals that draw huge
subsidies from taxpayers (and often are so overcrowded that
regular patients are lucky to get a gurney in the hallway)
have set aside entire floors for $2,400aday deluxe suites.
They come with butlers, 5star meals, marble baths, imported
bed sheets, special kitchens, and other amenities for swells
who have both insurance and cash to burn.

It's repugnant for the plutocratic elite to pervert health
 care into a luxury commodity. It splits asunder America's
 essential, uniting principle of the common good. To push for
 a national policy that treats health care as a fundamental
 human need - for all - contact Physicians for a National
 Health Program: http://www.pnhp.org/

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