Reblogged: The Profit Motive: Not Always Good

[dianahsieh]

This is a horrifying story: Cancer doc admits scam, giving patients unneeded chemo. This doctor gave unnecessary chemotherapy — basically, he poisoned his patients — for money. (The profit motive is usually a tremendous force for good… but not always.)

Here’s the bright spot in this morally bleak story — the nurse who turned him in as soon as she saw (in a job interview) him doing wrong:

Angela Swantek, a chemotherapy nurse who blew the whistle on Fata to state authorities in 2010, was in the courtroom during Fata’s guilty plea. She said she was relieved to hear him admit to things she witnessed years ago in his office. “I’m numb,” she said in a court hallway. “I’m not surprised though; I wondered how his team was going to defend him. The charts don’t lie.”

Swantek, 45, of Royal Oak, said she went to Fata’s office for a job interview in 2010 when she saw patients getting chemotherapy in a manner that wasn’t correct. “I left after an hour and half. I thought this is insane,” she said. That same day, Swantek went home and wrote a letter to the state and suggested they investigate him.

According to Swantek, the state did nothing and notified her in 2011 that they had found no wrongdoing. “I handed them Dr. Fata on a platter in 2010 and they did absolutely nothing,” said Swantek, noting she was elated when she learned the federal government charged Fata in 2013.

“I started crying,” she said. “I thought about all of the patients he took care of and harmed.”

Kudos to her for reporting him to the authorities, rather than just walking away. If only those authorities had done their job…

Link to Original

[CriticalThinker2000]

Isn't using the phrase 'profit motive' to describe this guy's motivations just as disingenuous as describing his actions as 'selfish'? If he were worried about profit why would he scam his customers thereby destroying his career, ensuring that he will never make another penny, and ruining his own life? This is not the profit motive at work and identifying it as such seems like a package deal smear on the term, which is used to describe the rational motivations of actors in a free market.

[Nicky]

There's no profit motive here. All there is is a corrupt, inept, socialist bureaucracy that performed exactly as should be expected. The only surprise is that it only took 3 years for the scheme to be stopped.