THE CUNNING FENNEC FOX: I Am, Therefore I Rant . . . and the Cunning Fennec Fox

15 May 2014

0714 hrs

Good morning Patient Reader,

How is it going, good people? Here we are again, Denizens of Earth; a body of rock and iron and water traveling around our little, middle-aged sun at around 32,000 miles an hour.

Why do I bring that up? Who gives a shit? It’s my damn blog so just take it. Except for you, Patient Reader, who must simply tolerate my aberrant, ranting behaviour. Or not.

So what do I need to write about today? How about more Stream-of-Consciousness-type stuff? (No stretch for you, Fox . . . I can hear your collective voice say.) I mean, y’all know me well enough to understand that whatever the topic with which I begin my diatribes, there are always the many tangents and non sequituri on which I travel and on which I extract from my, and many others’, recta.

That said, let’s start off with the healthcare of the day. Pharmaceutical companies; HMOs; sales reps; docs in it only for the money; insurance companies, both of the health-and-life varieties as well as those of the malpractice variety, you know, where suited CFOs decide what kind of medical care you’re going to get . . . These are some of things upon which I shall touch.

Pharm . . . jebus, where do I begin? Do you remember when we would never see a medication commercial on TV? Yes, before the industry was de-regulated, you never saw them. Now, I know I come across as anti-capitalist, but really I am not. I also come across as a socialist, lower-case “s,” and yeah, in a way I am, but not in the USSR sense of the term.

But regulations are sometimes beneficial to our society. Sometimes it’s OK to say that no, you can’t just run pell-mell through the populace and do as you please. Make as money as you want to make, but please, don’t do it by selling your conscience and your morals . . . or anyone else’s, for that matter.

photography by properfessor

I have first-hand experience. Over my medical career I saw medical professionals, M.D.s, N.Ps, PNPs, et al, given all sorts of swag by these drug companies to push their drugs. And I’ll discuss the FDA at some point, if not today.

So these “healthcare professionals” are taken on these fancy trips and given all sort of (very expensive) gifts and even monetary kick-backs from drug companies for prescribing the me`dicament du jour. Sad. Even when another drug would be more efficacious.

We have the ability and the technology to cure malaria, the plasmodium parasite-caused killer of a million people world-wide annually. But it’s only the poor and brown-skinned that are afflicted by this ailment, right? And god knows we have enough of those fuckers on the planet, huh?

But who (what drug company) wants to spend a billion dollars in R and D on a med that will never turn a profit? Good god, they could use that money to develop yet another boner-inducing medication for fat, middle-aged, erectile-ly-challenged fuck monster who pay $10 per hard on! I mean, we are a pharmaceutical company, fa chrissakes!

Why else would pharm be in the business? To develop meds that saved lives? What are you nutso?

Look at the dearth of efficacious antibiotics (AB). Again, why spend all that money making a med that someone takes once or twice in their lifetimes, and even then only for ten or so days, just to treat an insidious disease like MRSA or AB-Resistant tuberculosis? I mean, c’mon . . . only the filthy and/or dark-skinned emmeffers suffer from those diseases. The Great Unwashed.

I mean jesus, the M and R in MRSA stand for methicillin-resistant! Methicillin, for those of you who give a shit, is a big-gun AB. It’s one of the last-line defenses against the Worst of the Worst. It’s based on penicillin, but was developed for pen-resistant microbes. Pretty serious.

We’re all up in arms because of Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction; upset that our young and impressionable sons and daughters were exposed to an old, sagging, wrinkled tit, when they should be watching commercials for beer and Viagra. Stupid Janet Jackson’s tit!

We really need to pull our heads out of our asses.

Sigh . . . OK, who’s next? HMOs? Jeez. These fuckers need their partners, id est, doctors, etc, to bring in money hand over fist. I mean, they are for-profit companies, after all. If you’re an HMO, or any insurance company for that matter, why would you pay for expensive tests and procedures if it will cut into your shareholder’s profits? To better mankind and improve the health of the general population? Ludicrous! You don’t go into the healthcare INDUSTRY to actually be a healer, do you?

I was explaining to a friend just this morning how I made pretty good bank back then, even though I was a non-M.D. diagnostician. I could make about $1200 a day doing what I did. Yeah. Plus I had excellent health insurance.

In fact, my wife and I turned a profit (there really is no better word) by having our baby, making around 5 bucks every time we had an OB visit. They gave us that cash to cover parking in a free lot. Hmm. Even the baby, my beautiful daughter, was free. No hospital room fee; no labor and delivery costs . . . even the OB and Ped doc’s fees were covered.

Out of a little thing called Professional Courtesy, I was even exempt from doc fees if I saw a colleague. In turn, my fees were waived when I treated a colleague or his/her family member. Pretty good deal?

But I was one of those lucky sunsabidges that could actually afford a medical bill. I could pay in cash. But I never had a medical bill before my present Student-Status . . . even when I was in school the previous time oh so many years ago, I was working at the medical school and had good insurance even then.

I started waiving my fees for services rendered when it came to the Regular Joe. You know, the small-garage mechanic who, if he can’t fix your brakes, he at least makes your horn louder? That guy, and his family, too.

If you had a blue-collar job or you have a small business and your profit goes to rent and food and clothes for your kids, then guess what? You didn’t get billed the $400+ for the 45 minutes I spent with you. If your insurance company paid, then you can bet I stuck it to them.

Oddly enough, when my paychecks became a tad bit smaller, my wife complained. $15,000 in the checking account, according to her, was not keeping enough steaks in the freezer. “I married a neurophysiologist, not a Socialist (upper-case “s”) . . .” she once said to me.

On a related note, she told me she liked that I wore $1000 suits (or scrubs- whatever the scenario required) to work; liked the fact that we could attend dinner parties and fund-raisers held at Michael Jordan’s home (no, he was out of town) and that she could tell all the stuck-up bitches what it was I did for this meagre, just-squeaking-by-type salary.

Liked the fact that we could have the best house or car or whatever. We didn’t, but we could have.

This wife is the same C-Word that threw away my shirt- the one that held Fonda’s tears (for those who don’t get the reference, see my Fonda and the Cunning Fennec Fox story).

Fonda and the Cunning Fennec Fox

It’s hard to live with a person like that; a person whom you think married you because she loved you for who you were, not what you were.

You selfish, greedy little skanky coozes out there . . . Except for you, Ladies of the Patient-Reader variety. All of you intelligent, well-rounded humanist, CFF regs are always exempt from these insulting-but-sadly-all-too-true admonitions. Jesus, why can’t I find a woman like you, collective Female Patient Reader?