What’s Bad About
Feeling Good?
Daily Observer
Lebenkrank was disgruntled and made no attempt at reticence
as he attacked Lapius. The flush in his cheeks flourished as he
became more volatile. “Look at this, Lapius. This is the
bill from the surgeon, this from the anesthesiologist, this for the operating
room, this from the hospital.” He flung
a dossier of papers on Lapius’s desk.
S.Q.
Lapius plucked them neatly and perused them. His brows raised inquisitively, “What’s your
point, Lebenkrank?”
“My
point, Lapius, is that when you referred me for
surgery you never indicated what the costs would be. Have you totaled them?”
Lapius shook his head.
“Not accurately, but they seem to run in the neighborhood of four
thousand dollars. How do you feel?”
“Fine. What’s that got to do with it?”
“It
seems to me,” Lapius replied dryly, “that how you
feel is all that matters. If I remember
correctly you called me early one morning pleading for help. You said the pain was unbearable, the fever was
mounting, your skin was yellow. You even
asked me if you could have Asian flu, but I forgave you that betise on the basis of your fever. In any case, I met you at the emergency room,
rapidly made a diagnosis of infected gall bladder with an obstruction of the
common bile duct, called a surgeon and within the hour you were on
antibiotics. When things settled down,
we took out your gall bladder, removed the offending stone – and here you are,
in the pink and complaining.”
“But
look at the cost?”
` “I’ve
looked,” said Lapius, “and I would like to call your
attention to the fact that your medical bills were only 10 per cent of the
hospital bills.”
“It
cost me a thousand dollars alone for special nurses,” Lebenkrank
moaned. “One would think that with a
hospital bill of that magnitude I wouldn’t have to have extra nurses. What were the hospital nurses doing?”
“Writing
up the charts, taking down medical orders,” Lapius
noted.
“What
are they now, secretaries?”
“To
some extent they are. Forced to be
because of the state and federal regulations that all records be kept
precisely.”
“You
mean the records are more important than the patients?”
“Yes,
Lebenkrank, they seem to be in this modern age,” Lapius said trying to comfort the clearly discomfited man.
“Frankly,”
Lebenkrank continued, “I think it’s a scandal. The cost is prohibitive.”
“Look
Lebenkrank, you are an economist. Clearly we are in great economic difficulties
at the moment. Costs are rising and jobs
and incomes are sagging. If a loaf of
bread costs nearly a dollar. Why
complain it cost three thousand dollars to save your life – and if you keep
ranting like this I will agree with you that it wasn’t worth it. At least you are alive to earn the money
back. And surely you had insurance.”
“Of
course I did. But that is no excuse to
bleed me.”
“At
least we have done something for the money,” Lapius
said starchily.
He was becoming annoyed. “What do
you do for the thirty or so thousand dollars a year you pull down for being a
professor of economics. Wrong
predications; theoretical treatises on how things should be, but aren’t. Inappropriate advice to the Congress and the
President, all of it conflicting, on how we should straighten the economy out. At least the medical profession gave you
something very precious for the few dollars you spent. We cured you.
Tell me, Lebenkrank, have you cured the
economy?”
Lebenkrank was abashed.
“Well, of course there was the unpredictable oil embargo and increase in
energy cost that we couldn’t predict.”
“Hah,
you couldn’t predict the increase in energy costs,” Lapius
said sardonically. “A baby could have
predicted them. If a gallon of milk
costs $1.50 from a cow why shouldn’t a gallon of gas cost at least half as
much? Oil, iron, copper – these are all
irreplaceable commodities. They are not
infinite supply. Every school kid knows
that. But you should look at the
brighter side, Lebenkrank. We are, after all, really a very rich country
because there is one natural resource that you economists haven’t taken into
account.”
“What’s
that?” asked Lebenkrank, puzzled.
“Gall
bladders,” Lapius exclaimed triumphantly. “And you have the figures to prove it. Your own gall bladder cost $4,000. There are two hundred million Americans with
almost as many gall bladders. Let’s say
only one hundred million gall bladders are left. At $4,000 apiece we won 4 hundred billion
dollars worth of gall bladders. And just
think about the price of a kidney operation – or if we cashed in on heart
transplants at 30 to 40 thousand each.
My god, Lebenkrank – we are the possessors of
untoward wealth we never dreamed of. And
spleens, and stomachs, thyroids, parathyroids,
adrenals, -.”
Lapius kept reeling off the figures, but to now avail Lebenkrank, defeated, had beat a hasty retreat through the
front door.