HOSPICE: Fine was an atrocity

Anyone who has ever volunteered with one of our local charities, sacrificed financially with donations, or been involved with fund raising projects for various projects such as KMC Festival of Trees, Kroc Center, or Hospice House, knows the blood, sweat and tears that goes into every penny raised. So, when the federal Department of HHS swoops in and STEALS $50,000 of our communities’ hard earned money from Hospice in punishment for a thief stealing one of their laptops, every local citizen should be outraged!

Unfortunately, we better get used to these types of ridiculous and punitive fines: Obamacare is riddled with them. My daughter, a recent graduate from medical school, is in a pediatric residency in California, where an attending physician said to be careful about placing children on respirators, even if the intervention might be helpful, as there are new financial penalties to the hospital if the child develops an infection while on the respirator. There are huge fines to hospitals if patients need to be readmitted within 30 days of discharge.

The people who wrote this are apparently unaware that patients can have complications no matter what one does, and that some patients are non-compliant (do not follow doctors’ orders). I was recently reminded by a friend from our early days as RNs of a patient who would purposely re-infect her urinary tract so she could be readmitted to the renal unit.

Caring for human beings, with all their flaws and psychological issues, is complicated enough without the federal government throwing huge fines and penalties into the mix which will only serve to make health care more expensive and inefficient. Taking $50,000 away from our Hospice, money that was supposed to help the terminally ill in Kootenai County, will do nothing to make it function better.

Don’t punish the hospice! HHS: give Kootenai County our money back! Your theft is worse than the laptop thief! Hopefully, he recognizes his sin and thus has some hope for redemption. HHS erroneously believes they are doing good; some of the greatest evil in the history of the world has been done by governments believing they were doing good.

DENISE GRAVES

Hayden Lake