Idiotic Stereotyping by Annoying Visiting "Nurses' and others...

I put "nurse" in quotes because I think most nurses do not actually engage in that sort of care-giving.


Rather, most perform various sorts of busy work and paper work.


That is the beauty of the medical system in the USA.  Medicare may be, as experts seem to say, less bureaucratic than commercial systems---but, for all that, it too is burdened with idiotic paperwork and self-spinning circles of bureaucratic madness.


Undoubtedly, the nurses who visit my parents home stereotype me, and that in a variety of ways.
I do not enjoy having such false and erroneous (presumptive) judgments made about me.


I am not, for example, Mr. Fix-It.  I do not endorse the so-called American values of home ownership.


I do not now, nor have I ever desired to own a home.


I do not like hammering or sawing or using power tools.  If fact, I don't do it.  I don't want to do it, and I can't see anything good about doing it.


The idea that a person should work forty or fifty  or more hours, and then come home to do carpentry or lawn work strikes me as the most pure insanity, a form of hell.


Ergo, when nurses blythely suggest that I engage in modifications to my parents' home, I stare at them in amazement.


It's called jumping to conclusions, or being ignorant----not knowing (not bothering to know) who you are talking too.


And, that, in fact raises another problem with In-Home care as provided by Medicare.  The goal of all nurse-visitors seems to enforce a certain uniformity or consistency that is suitable to them.  How suitable to them?  Who is "them"?  The bureaucrats at Medicare.  Because, unless and until someone persuades me otherwise, I see the ugly hand of cost-counting and cost-cutting petty minds
who have no notion of the Hippocratic Oath anything else civilized, humane or decent.


We are tortured with idiotic questions on a regular basis.  They tell us to prepare for a disaster.  And then yesterday, condescendingly, the visiting nurse shared her own personal story about how she buys bottled water.


What a touching personal recollection!  No!  What an annoying piece of condescension!


What about the fact that the USA is not prepared to face the consequences of global warming?
What about the fact that in this country today there exists an insane policy:  every one for him- or herself!


What about the implied claim that you will not get help when you need it!!!????


We cannot say such things in public.  The Medicare system does not allow these points to be made.


But, note well:  Medicare has my parents' money.  It's not a question of getting something for nothing.


Let me return, however, to my point about standardization.


The picture I am now getting of these mindless goons who call themselves nurses is that they follow
orders very well, and they love to be bossy.  They are frustrated because they live within the confined space of a system where no one is allowed to ask questions and no real discussion occurs.


(I have had some experience of that system when working with USA-based employers......)


So, when these frustrated creatures have a chance to be assertive, Watch Out!  They are going to COMMAND you-----and that not in dulcet tones......


But why does there need to be standardization?  For the same reason that USA "educational" (so-called) institutions abroad like to have master Syllabi to decide what's to be taught when. It makes it easy to replace a person.  


Thus the system is designed to be impersonal!


Put it differently.  When a job is bad, people don't want to stay in it.  So, if a different nurse comes every couple of months to torture us with Medicare's idiotic questions and give us stupid, condescending advice (uttered in the strict Imperative Mode as if we were children) then I draw the conclusion that even the torturers don't enjoy what they are doing.


Oh, dear, oh dear!  Where is Michael Albert when you need him? Let's talk about "balanced job complexes"---And let's get rid of Nurse Supervisors and CEO's......Let's have real democracy in the workplace!!! NOW


Link below to Albert's chapter on Balanced Job Compexes from his book "Parecon"


http://books.zcommunications.org/books/pareconv/Chapter6.htm#_VPID_45


Footnote:
There is a lady who comes every Friday, and she's very sweet.  But, you know, my mother has a system for dealing with her own medicines---and my father's medicines----a system which has evolved over about forty years......and that nice lady (and every other nurse who is not so nice) messes up the system and creates extra work for my mother.  Hmmmm.  What do you call that?