Chicago 2016 Medical Olympics!

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up to the 2016 Chicago Olympic Medical Competition! That’s right, folks. ‘Me too’ hospital CEO’s, fawning, nay, drooling over the City’s Olympic fetish, are invited to compete for the right to:

PROVIDE FREE MEDICAL SERVICE TO OLYMPIC PARTICIPANTS, WHILE, AT THE VERY SAME TIME, TURN AWAY NON-EMERGENCY CASES WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE!

Note that this aspect of the competition occurs PRIOR to the start of the ‘games’. Hospital and other medical executives will be pleading, begging, urging, cajoling and Power-Pointing every City Contact they have, currying favor as favor has never been curried, urging City leaders to support their Hospital as the privileged free provider of Olympic medical care. And Olympic care it truly will be. Imagine, hospitals lining up to demand that they be chosen to provide FREE medical care! Is this communism, or what! And what’s wrong with that. Universal Health Care. Finally! Except for one small catch. It only works if the health care universe you occupy is the same universe that pampered Olympic athletes occupy, not the universe occupied by ordinary flabby citizen types without health insurance who can’t afford the price of admission to a stadium toilet. You don’t have to take my word for it. After-all, if you believe everything you read in a blog, well, enough said. For the absolute facts, you can read all about it in the Chicago Tribune (Chicago Tribune, 8/25/2008, Business Section, ‘Race For The 2016 Games’, ‘Hospitals to vie for Olympics’. The Tribune is an actual newspaper, and you can certainly believe what you read in an actual newspaper!

For a hospital to become an ‘official’ Olympic provider, which I think mostly means the hospital marketing team can say Olympic things without getting sued, you have to give free medical care to some of the healthiest people in the world! Kafka, Chicago, 2016!

This of course is all part of a selfless desire of medical executives to foster the great Olympic spirit of niceness for two weeks every few years, a time when wars are not started, mostly. I am not certain whether the word ‘niceness’ has been copyrighted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), such that I need to be an Olympic sponsor or provider to say ‘niceness’ without getting sued, but if the term is copyrighted I am sorry. Maybe I can get a part-time job with the ‘winning’ hospital bidder and be retroactively authorized to have used it in this rant.

Of course, the real reason medical chiefs want to be recognized as official Olympic sponsors is to put them in a favorable light with the City’s political leadership, and of course, all that publicity. After all, if you are recognized as being capable of treating the hangnail of an Olympic runner, then patients all over the Chicago area are going to demand that their doctors send them to your Olympically Sanctioned Hospital. At least that’s the theory, I guess. What Hospital group wants to be left out of being allowed to wear buttons and pass out badges and other cra@p and put the Olympic logo on their Internet ads and TV spots, thereby attracting patients (insured only, please) from competing hospitals. After all, if a hospital isn’t picked as an Olympic Provider, obviously its because they are not deemed by the IOC to be qualified to treat Olympic Athletes. On the other hand, maybe some hospitals will decide that they are about medicine, and just don’t have the resources and staff to dedicate to two weeks of free service, with the concomitant willingness to let their existing patient population languish.

And along this line, do you really want to be a patient in a hospital that dedicates years of time and resources in preparing to take care of Olympic athletes and their handlers for two weeks? What toll will that take on patient services? Where will the hospital staff be, in classes designed to satisfy the Olympic Committee requirements that classes be taken, or making sure that the hospital is being run right?

Here’s one quote from the Chicago Tribune story.

“We are pleased to help Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics,” Northwestern Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Kris Lathan, referring to the hospitals collectively. “We are currently reviewing how, as a medical community, we can come together to support the city’s efforts.”


What medical community? All of a sudden there is a cooperating medical community? This is ‘committee speak’. How freeking lovely. The ‘medical community’ wants to help. Because of some deep, heart-felt commitment to Chicago’s Olympic aspirations, or because they are afraid that if some other outfit gets picked as the official provider of Olympic bandages, then they will lose out on all the marketing hype? Another, less cynical approach is, OK, you want to help, and it’s not all just about marketing or the city administration leaning on you to do something. But why do it for free? Because that’s the way it’s done? Because that’s what the IOC demands? Because if you don’t, the city may not get the bid? Are the folks constructing the Olympic facilities doing it for free? Are the costs of extra police and other security measures going to be donated? Let the IOC figure out how to pay for it. What on earth of lasting value does the medical community or the city derive from giving away your services for two weeks? What is this, Google world, where you provide free services and get to run ads using the Olympic logo? If this is truly is about feeling good about doing something for free, then for two weeks, how about no charge at the emergency room, for everyone! Remember the L.A. Olympics? I don’t. But why not call L.A. hospitals or the Olympically sanctioned L.A. Intravenous Fluid Providers and ask them if it was worth it. Better yet, call the folks who lived in the Olympic neighborhood and ask them what they got out if it for free.


The summer Olympics belong in Greece, permanently, so that the world can avoid the orgy of competition for the Great Bid, by cities which can ill-afford the time and effort required to attain the right to stage the best opening ceremony ever that will be remembered for many years to come, or for five minutes.

08/14/2008

I can think of better things to spend money than on than Olympic preparations. Even if private funds are all that are ever needed, with no chance that taxpayers would be on the hook, such funds would be squandered on, among other things, the construction of a $350,000,000+ TEMPORARY stadium! The world could save a lot of money if the Olympics, at least the summer version, were permantly held where they started, in Greece, with the proceeds used to offset the costs of the expenses of all participating parties.

Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, the State of Illinois is not only flat broke, but it is deep in debt, and you want to spend your time and money pursuing a feel-good Olympics to make Chicago 'World Class'? World Class what? Did it take an Olympics to make L.A. 'World Class'. When you are in L.A, do you say to yourself, "Wow, they did the Olympics here!". I doubt it, because its not there right now. Where did it go? After two weeks, it went away. And what did it leave behind? A lot less than there would have been if the same resources had gone directly into the community.

Any town that finances an Olympics does indeed earn the world's recognition, not as World Class, but as World Sap, with the world saying, 'Spend it, and we will come'.

The question you need to ask yourself is, what good is this going to do for me? Why do I want an Olympics here? Because it will be fun for me? Because of the pride that comes when other people recognize my region as worthy of notice? What about the pride borne of a community that boasts acres of affordable housing or universal health care coverage. Now that is something for folks with $350,000,000 to spend and two weeks to spend it to strive for!

The Chicago Transit Authority train line has long stretches of go-slow zones and an archaic switching system. Interstate rail traffic is being driven far out of the city because of long delays at grade level street crossings. In some neighborhoods, sitting on the porch on a warm summer night can be dangerous. The city of Chicago needs more police and an updated transit system, not an Olympics. The time and money dedicated into attracting the 2016 Olympic Games is taking the focus off of these far more important issues.

Two weeks of media attention to get the City of Chicago into the international spot light. That's what the Olympics is for, and it isn't worth it.