You Don't Get What You Need, Only What You Can Pay For

"Patients may simply deserve only the amount of care they can afford":

Read about one of the great Republican doctors:

"Sunday's Los Angeles Times featured a particularly lurid case of medical profiteering in the form of one Dr. Prem Reddy, who owns eight hospitals in Southern California. I do not begrudge any physician a comfortable lifestyle -- good doctoring is hard work -- but Dr. Reddy dwells in a 15,000 square foot mansion featuring gold-plated toilets and keeps a second home, valued at more than $9 million, in Beverly Hills, as well as a $1.4 million helicopter for commuting.

The secret behind his $300 million fortune? For one thing, he rejects the standard hospital practice of making contracts with insurance companies because he feels that these contracts unduly limit his reimbursements. (In a battle between Aetna and Reddy, it would be hard to know which side to cheer for.) In addition, he's suspended much-needed services such as chemotherapy, a birthing center and mental health care as insufficiently profitable. And his hospitals are infamous for refusing to treat uninsured patients, like a patient with kidney failure and a 16-month-old baby with a burn.

But Dr. Reddy -- who is, incidentally a high-powered Republican donor -- has a principled reason for his piratical practices. 'Patients,' the Los Angeles Times reports him saying, 'may simply deserve only the amount of care they can afford.' He dismisses as 'an entitlement mentality' the idea that everyone should be getting the same high quality health care. This is Bush's vaunted principle of 'private medicine' at its nastiest: You don't get what you need, only what you can pay for."

Does anybody know this asshole's GPS coordinates - and how to arm a surface-to-surface missle ?