IGNORMARTE
If anyone can keep secrets, it’s doctors. They are the best at keeping secrets because they have the most to lose.
Ever since health-maintenance organizations (HMOs) became the standard, doctors have had to do some fast shuffling. You see, how an HMO works is that it receives a set amount of money for each patient it agrees to provide health care for each year. That’s all fine and good for the doctors, or it would be if the “non-profit” hospitals didn’t have to worry about their constant upgrading of buildings, equipment, procedures, etc. that makes their hospitals the ones everyone wants to go to. These perpetual upgrades ain’t cheap! Somebody has to pay for them. Guess who? The patients! However, with the measly little co-pays the patients give there is no way it’s coming from that. But how to squeeze the money from the patients? Through the excessive ordering of tests, that’s how.
Where the problems for the doctors comes in is how to convince the patients that they need the tests. Plus, when your HMO gets assigned a bunch of healthy people it’s a drag. Healthy people don’t want or need tests. Doctors have been wracking their brains since HMOs started – and have finally come up with the ideal solution: Ignormarte.
Ignormarte comes from ignor, or ignorant, as the patients are ignorant of what’s going on. The marte part is market, as in looking at the patients as a commodity that can be shifted and traded like grain or livestock. How it came about is Dr. Jones’ (name changed to protect the racket) daughter, who works for a large insurance corporation, wrote an algorithm that can break down the statistics of any particular set of HMO patients as to who is well, who is sick, who is gullible enough to be sold unnecessary testing, and who is likely to go along with the most unnecessary testing. The HMO that Dr. Jones is a part of was then able to select which patients stay and which patients get shifted to other HMOs. Of course Dr. Jones’ HMO kept the most gullible patients who can be sold the most tests, and shifted the healthy ones out to other HMOs.
Dr. Jones’ HMO has ranked as the best HMO in the State for the last 5 years. Every hospital in the region clamors to have their patients come for tests and services. Dr. Jones’ daughter is running in 2022 for governor.
The End.
NOTE: THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY
Michael is the host of Mindlovemisery Menagerie’s Tale Weaver. Michael says:
This week I invite you to play with this nonsense word [ignormarte] and create your own meaning and story about it. It can be noun, verb, adjective or adverb, its fate is in your hands. Write your response and link it using the linking tool below. Go forth and have fun.
Tao Talk 
Nice explanation, as it made perfect sense to me. Not the doctors you would want to be around when you are giving birth.
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Thanks, Jim. Women used to give birth in the fields and keep going. Even giving birth has been taken away from them.
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Good story.
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Thanks, Sadje.
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You’re welcome Li!
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What a great tale Jade. Thanks so much for participating
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Thanks, Michael, glad you liked it.
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Aha!! i always wondered what it was that made me leery of the HMO… Now I know.. Or at least I think I do!
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:) Thanks for reading and commenting, Violet.
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Fictional you say… seems quite real to me in my own personal experience.
Just the other day I was talking to a friend who had to have a short hospital stay and had to have some implanted device. The visiting nurses said it was the wrong device!
Not only that the hospital made the appointment for my friend and neglected to tell him that the office he was going to while in the same building, was not his usual doctor!
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I have to shake my head at the pervasiveness of incompetence in the medical community. And when it is not incompetence it is outright manipulation, collusion, and a hidden agenda that has nothing to do with the patient’s health. I just had another episode of gross incompetence that I don’t want to give details on, but the doctor gave me instructions that made the situation WORSE.
About your friend, did she stop the doc before the wrong device was implanted?? And that sneakiness of making it look like it was for her doctor but wasn’t. WOW
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The gent is in his 90’s and wouldn’t know what was right. Dependent on the Docs for the right stuff. All the offices the wrong one and the right one claimed it was the schedulers fault for not giving the correct location. Twits.
Sorry about your issue. I just try to avoid Docs’ these days. But one has to go in prepared with alternates themselves and not be afraid to ask for alternatives or deny treatment if it seems at all ‘wonky’.
Making the situation is worse is something I came across with one of my children. Two different docs in the same office and not reading the chart or conferring… Basically you don’t give a person with lactose intolerance whole milk. I ended up figuring out what was ‘wrong’ with ‘that’ child and ended up changing doctors …again.
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So if the gent is in his 90s I would say he fits “vulnerable population” status, which makes it even worse. I know what I heard the doctor say in the office and so went and looked at the “discharge” sheet from the office visit. She said one thing, not once but multiple times, but typed something else in the notes. Warm is not hot and hot is not warm. She also noted “multiple issues with PCP” which is her, I’m guessing (primary care physician).
She is not used to dealing with anyone who “talks back” and is starting to cover her azz with her notes. I left two critical/true quality control surveys on her so far, so maybe she’s getting some heat? I don’t know but like you, with your son and the terrible “practice” on him, I am going to be changing doctors soon.
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I hope you can find someone you can trust.
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Thanks Jules.
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