Yes, but can he bring peace to the ER?

Yes, but can he bring peace to the ER?

>On the occasion of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, we interrupt our regular programming for a special report

. Doc Gurley here. I'm reporting embedded in the ER conflict zone. Can you hear me, Chuck? Destabilizing influences and tribal-specialty warfare between docs have brought this once productive, emerging First-World zone into Third-World chaos.

There's a shortage of supplies, bodies lying everywhere and a brawl between factions in the East hall - the surgeons are saying the OR's full but the ER won't take any more refugee admission-holdovers. Medicine-service warlords have been brought in to negotiate a temporary treaty. Looks like we're going to have to set up camps in the hallways. Women are weeping, children wailing and sooner or later there's going to be some major disease outbreaks. Hey, is that Angelina Jolie I see in the distance?

Hang on a sec while I adjust my camo. These dang scrubs are cheaply made contractor crap - no protection at all from the flying mucous shrapnel in Room A, and boy, do they ride up your butt in this heat. What's that Chuck? It's hard to hear over the whining tracer-sound of the defib charging and the Jody-calls of the code team running past. What led to this deterioration, is that what you asked?

As you know, Chuck, there's been simmering class warfare between the have-insurances and the have-no-insurances. Those tenuous forces have been destabilized by the syphoning off of staggering amounts of wealth by healthcare dictators. One healthcare dictator is known to be putting $57,000 AN HOUR into his own pocket. That's a sum that could earn a place-showing among the Marcos and Mobutos in the game of stealing wealth and impoverishing a nation. Now that the denied-insurance underclass is no longer willing to lie on the roadside and quietly die, out-and-out verbal warfare has erupted. Unfortunately, in the way these battles play out worldwide, the moneyed ruling class has got the latest mega-weapons technology, and a scorched earth policy.

Yeowza! Did you get that on camera, Chuck? I just missed the blowback. We've got primary care skirmishes breaking out over pathetic morsels of pay. We've got a nurse in triage who hasn't had a break in ten hours - if someone doesn't get red-cross-level relief to her, she's likely to go nuclear. The body count on the street is now estimated at 48,000 a year...Chuck? CHUCK! I'm breaking up, the bloodbath is rising!! Divert! DIVERT that ambulance, you fools, we're .....ssssssssttttttttttttt .

Posted By: Doc Gurley | October 09 2009 at 05:01 PM


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