"Quality Patient Care"

Letter to the Wall Street Journal

January 6, 1998

Ned Crabb

Editorial Dept.

Wall Street Journal

(212) 416 2658F

To the Editor:

Jeffrey Husseri complains in his January 5 letter ("Costs? Down. Patients? Don't Ask.") that Illinois' Michael Reese Hospital does not deliver "quality patient care" because his mother-in-law, who smoked cigarettes for 41 years, was not given her requested chest x-rays at several annual physical exams.

Husseri should be informed that administering chest x-rays to a woman who has smoked cigarettes for 41 years can in no meaningful way be described as health care. The melodrama of blame that Husseri is enacting has its origins in the idea that his mother-in-law's health is the responsibility of someone other than his mother-in-law.

Were Husseri to willfully step in front of a bus, today, one can imagine that, tomorrow, he would deny his part in the creation of his injuries, while grabbing the spotlight to accuse everyone around him of negligence.

Signed,

Jock Doubleday

Director

Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc.

http://www.SpontaneousCreation.org

director@spontaneouscreation.org