It wasn't until Pham was diagnosed with Ebola that health officials decided

[calimary]

45. Military-style accountability to the private sector, too.

I am so sick and tired of the bean-counters running everything. And running it into the ground. Unrestrained! I see it happening in my former industry (radio) - the bean-counters have just utterly ruined it. Penny-wise/Pound-OBSCENELY-foolish. And Oh God, we CAN'T impose regulations or restrictions or oversight upon these people. Free-market! Free-market! When that's exactly what we need. The runaway vultures HAVE to be contained. Penned in. Restricted. You CANNOT just do whatever the hell you want in the so-called "free market" when it starts to hurt other people. When it starts to impact people adversely and cause harm, or greater risk of illness, or direct threats of exposure to potential DEATH.

Health care services MUST NOT be a FOR-PROFIT OPERATION!!!! Not EVER!!!!!!!

Dammit! Does EVERYTHING have to be something you can make money off of? Is that REALLY all we care about? All that makes the world go round? Our entire reason for being? Seriously? Does it really have to be that way?

THAT is something I wish we could do something about. This is our "National Ebola Affliction." The Ebola virus of the Almighty Money-Grab. It infects and sickens and kills.

I'm watching the report about the Carnival cruise ship. Well, THAT's gonna impact the bean-counters. They couldn't stop in Mexico. Had to turn around and head back out to sea. Clean the ship thoroughly (we hope). That took more unplanned, unscheduled time out of the routine. Unhappy inconvenienced passengers (and, I'm sure, quite unnerved and some maybe downright scared). Probably gonna impact cruise travel, too, because paranoia is stronger and faster-spreading than even the Ebola virus.

The bean-counters are just gonna have to bite the bullet and take it in the shorts here. Maybe you're gonna lose some money. TOUGH. As far as the hospitals go, maybe you need to go the extra mile(s) and spend the money and do it right and make sure everybody's well-trained and well-supervised and well-supplied and well-informed, and well-covered, staffing-wise. And YEAH, that's gonna COST. Tough shit. That's just how it is. Maybe you shouldn't be in this particular venture just for the money anyway! Maybe this particular venture shouldn't be just about making money in the first place.

Hmmmm... are we talking about single-payer?

And what really burns me up is - we had some ALLEGED change-of-heart after Hurricane Katrina, too. We had SOME people begrudgingly admitting that well, yeah, you do need a central command. You do need to spend more on this stuff. You do have to do preventive stuff and things that might cost more. And that's just how it is. But the backslide from that after the danger was perceived to have passed. And people forgot. And people stopped caring.

Sadly, Hurricane Katrina's other short-attention-span lesson, that was taught and then quickly forgotten - was the demonstration of a VERY GRAVE need for a smart and effective central command. The organized big government involvement especially as the crisis crossed state lines and individual states were overwhelmed by the need and couldn't keep up or adequately respond. And here, of course, in THIS case, we have a freakin' Keystone Kops situation - where the "big government" has been crippled by savage funding cuts, they've had to make do with less (ALL KINDS of less - staffing, research, supplies). And instead of going on all-out offense from the get-go, they nickel-and-dimed it. Did the minimums, as far as precautions, recommendations, as little as they could get away with - that still might be sufficient. As little to inconvenience, as little to generate costs, as little as possible so as to keep expenses down. And look where that's gotten us. If we'd gone full-tilt-boogie, spent the money, done the training, aggressively spread the information - AS SOON AS THAT GUY, our unfortunate "Index Patient" Mr. Duncan, was hospitalized - the nation's entire hospital system should have been placed on Red Alert.

This mentality we've gotten into as a nation over the last 30-35 years - this stupid, reckless, short-sighted, cheapskate Penny-wise/Pound-EXTREMELY-foolish, just-do-the-minimums, playing catch-up, waking up only after the horse is out of the barn, day-late/dollar-short, cut-cut-cut-cut-cut-cut-cut, it's just horribly horribly screwed. And it's just gonna wind up screwing us.