The Healthcare Wars: Maximum Resistance

By Robert Rogers

An apocalyptic view of the future of healthcare and the world as governments turn away from the grisly
art of combat and instead begin a new focus of control through the one item that nearly everyone on the
planet utilizes, healthcare. It is also the one item whose price tag and importance cannot be overstated.
Through stock market control, the government begins to take down business after business in an attempt
to secure enough server networks across the country to begin a new era of complete control over
information. A band of resistance crops up known as the anarchists. This band of resistance plots to
overthrow individual servers in an attempt to reduce the iron grip of informational control the government
has created and return life to pre 21rst century status of freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543900453

Robert Rogers

Robert (Bob) Rogers is a retired professor of forestry at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point where he spent more than 30 years educating the next generation of forest managers. In the 1990s he and Paul Johnson developed the initial concept and outline for a project that eventually became the first edition of the Ecology and Silviculture of Oaks. Bob's areas of expertise include how soil-site relationships affect forest development and the application of quantitative methods to manage forests

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control.

The gentle, almost melodic, whirring of the analyzer filled Ethan’s ears with subconscious childhood familiarity as the machine, seemingly mindfully and purposefully, went about performing its pre-programmed duties. The room would have once been filled with the sound of a doctor or nurse shuffling through a paper chart feigning empathy and concern as they busily assessed the denial or existence of this patient’s latest malady or complaint. Despite the pervasiveness of propaganda and regulation that purported patients were individuals with feelings and souls, it was their job to classify patients into a neat little package of diagnostic groups or commercial classification codes. No code, no diagnostic group, meant no money for the healthcare institutions. It seemed everything these days boiled down to little more than numbers and codes. Furthermore, it was a litigious society, to say the least.

Medical interviews and mind-numbingly repetitive questions threatened to send the average patient spiraling off to the lonely ledge walk. It wasn’t enough that you answered the question in writing in triplicate, you had to relive and retell the entire story of sickness or injury so many times that even the sharpest mind could inadvertently leave out important details or timelines altering the entire efficacy of treatment. The whole process was so arduous, so time consuming, some people refused to get involved. The global economy had been in shambles for years and with its so-called democratic free trade it quickly and effortlessly evolved into a simmering soup of global cross-corporate idealism like crackers sinking into a steaming bowl of tomato soup.

Manufacturing seeped into healthcare like an insidious cancer. It was scarcely noticed at first. With each economic recession, each stock market dive, more and more corporate manufacturing gurus scurried from the unemployment lines to the front lines of healthcare. It was an easy target: profit and greed, and after eons of poor business models, ignorance of responsibility and arrogance paved the way for a technology takeover. Healthcare, ironically, had always been countless decades behind retail in technology. It was thought to be a perfect match at first. Manufacturing and retail companies had learned hard lessons about inventory control, human ergonomics, efficiency, and driving double-digit bottom lines. Manufacturing technology, in fact, was such a modular and reproducible model that many manufacturers had removed humans and their human errors altogether through the use of robotics and automation. Hence the massive influx from those who were spit out the bottom of unemployment lines, cast aside by the profitable and scientific-minded manufacturing giants they had helped to create.

Thoughts of assembly-line patient care, metrics that drive efficiency, and the reduction of human input made perfect sense to the corporate healthcare giants as manufacturing and healthcare merged. It was profit they sought, and of course it made sense to remove human error, right? Unlike most industries, healthcare balance sheets suffered greatest from an inequity of salaries. It was the largest budget item for most hospitals, and it became a prime target. The massive amount of labor and myriad of healthcare professionals who could never get along equated to a virtually unfixable system. Dozens of individual licensing boards tried to regulate their piece of the pie to no avail. No amount of regulation by governing bodies or professional organizations seemed to slow down the tragedy of human error that plagued healthcare and paved the way for litigation and takeover. Healthcare workers were not without culpability either as profession after profession vied for top spots in healthcare via an unmistakable sense of entitlement. The healthcare world was never quite solvent as hospital after hospital collapsed under the weight of expensive technology, greed, and skyrocketing supply costs. Bean counters were certain that once we removed the plethora of human mistakes from healthcare we would soon reap the benefits from a new wave of scientifically efficient processes that were profitable, reproducible, and most importantly controllable. After all, it seemed to work in global manufacturing, why wouldn’t the same model work on humans?

For more than a century masters of the universe threatened global wars designed to elicit control over burgeoning populations of the planet. Each country, those that could afford it, expended ill-gotten fortunes in futile attempts to protect borders from power-hungry neighbors. From the Cold War to the World Wars, each of the powerful nations jockeyed for top position by flexing military muscle and turning media into self-propagating literature and entertainment for the masses. It wasn’t military might that constrained the populations in the end. It was far more effective, and in some ways, far more sinister. It was the one thing that nearly every person on the planet needed at some time between birth and death, it was healthcare. Regulators realized that people would give their hard-earned fortunes for health and wellness if they were mired in illness and disease. They realized that each human on the planet could not and would not deny control to the government if promised immortality, even if that meant the fleeting promise of just one more hour, one more day to spend with loved ones.

The room was dimly lit and, save for a few flashing red diodes blinking like little demon eyes, was nearly void of color. It was a sterile portrayal of engineering, Ethan thought. It’s just a sprain, his lips whispered convincingly, talking to no one in particular. He uttered the phrase again, this time more forcefully, as if the machine itself were somehow ignoring him. There was no response from the machine, just the simple melodic melody of electronic gizmos and gadgets that reminded him of childhood Lego creations. The pain from the injury seemed to be growing more intolerable now, and the droning incessant noises from the machine were starting to irritate Ethan.

When is this dang-blasted, slow-witted, malfunction of backwoods technology going to finish? he wondered. The female’s voice seemed to come from thin air. It startled Ethan so badly that he lurched upward in a defensive posture and cracked his head on the decidedly unfriendly plastic