One, kill our, obliterate our system of universal health that is the Caja, simply because it is costly, inefficient, corrupt and has a license to kill much like “007”.
And, two, the entire healthcare system is rampant with corruption from management to the doctors and to the bribes to just make an appointment.
Almost every Tico and expat alike who must, by law, pays into the health insurance euphemistically provided in good will since 1947 for a healthier population, which has “collapsed”. it collapsed years ago and we keep on breathing air into a dead horse.
Recent examples:
1) Critical echo-cardiogram in July, that is July 2016 (After ICE installs the phones)
2) Ruptured hernia surgery: March 2016
3) Cardiac catheterization: 823 must wait in line until 2017
4) Dedicated physicians involved with a pizza store selling human organs to Israel.
5) The person who blew the whistle on double, triple billing the purchase of unused resources; ostracized…blacklisted.
6) The surgeon who left his patient wide open, a little boy, still performs cardiac surgery although he left his patient to take a cell phone and scurry over to Cima to perform a more financially rewarding appendectomy. The boy died.
7) Chief of Cardiology at Hospital Mexico who blew the whistle that it 800+ wait to receive the life saving cauterizing for coronary patients and of those patients 141 more than likely died while waiting is being blacklisted.
8) At Hospital Max Peralta in Heredia, the latest issue is that patients have been left in wheelchairs with cardio arrests to die.
Dr. Peter F. Brucker, the father of Modern Management said, “…every organization out grows its ability to be managed.”
The Caja is our perfect example.
It started out to be both meaningful as well as essential not to mention something for what the world to assimilate in universal healthcare. However, we are now a decrepit political football that as a valued institution might very well be better off destroyed and re-started again, but this time serving its patients rather than the pockets of the corrupt, the inflated egos and the administrative inefficiencies.
Corruption has become a culture, a “Thing.” Those who work within this unorganized bureaucracy have a golden opportunity to steal, pilfer and plunder. It is all too easy and justified to make ends meet in the 4th most expensive country in Latin America (Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay and Pura Vida in that order.) “We need to steal a little to keep our (Economic) heads above water.”
The infrastructure is there, well almost, it now takes heavy hammered management to attend to those of us who faithfully pay into the Caja insurance program as prescribed by law and an undeniable source of health for those who need it.