A Neat Idea for A Horror Movie?

The plot goes like this: In a prestigious private clinic an unscrupulous money grabbing boss discovers that the more operations that take place, the more money can be made. He hatches his evil little scheme.

This person, so vile and despicable, orders his medical staff to stop at nothing and to ‘operate’ and over- operate as much they can.

Fuelled by the offer of performance related pay linked directly to the number of operations performed, the medical team raise their personal incomes by carrying out every overly complex surgical intervention imaginable.

One day, an unsuspecting old woman enters this house of healing to have a single nodule removed from her breast, and comes out after an ‘operation’ with her complete breast missing. She wails in desperation.

Another unsuspecting victim enters horror hospital with pneumonia, and as part of the ‘treatment’ has a lung removed by the avaricious theatre team.

One week, a kindly, but frail, little old lady is admitted for some more ‘care’ by the monster doctors, and is subjected to three full scale operations over a period of seven months. The strain of all these operations results in the untimely death of the little old lady, but the doctors bonuses swell. They drive away from the carnage they are creating in shiny new BMWs and Mercedes’.

The ‘interventions’ continue apace, leading to a further four people losing their lives to the doctors of death. But, the scalpel wielding doctors continue to cut away, knowing that each time they exaggerate a little, their pay packets will grow proportionately. It is a macabre form of ‘overtime’. The more complex the intervention, the higher the bonus, and the closer the apartment in Monte Carlo becomes.

All the time, the head of the clinic, Mr Ghoul continues to egg his cutting-edge medics on, uttering, in his icily clinical and raucous tones, “More operations, more pay, my little ones.”.

One day though, in a high tech twist, one of the wacky quacks cracks, and he sends a text message to another of the D-team (‘d’ is for death), claiming that the strain of falsifying medical records and performing exaggerated surgical interventions was becoming too much for him. He knows his evil ways will be found out – those who live by the sword, often die by it, comments one of the police officers who has been involved in tapping the phones. The police are called in after the elderly father of a police officer went into the clinic for the removal of an ingrowing toenail, and came out in a coffin, after being subjected to a 24 hour triple bypass, with lung transplant, just for good money making measure.

I could go on, and bring this horrific little film to a blood curdling conclusion. How about an ending in which the death docs are just about to tuck in to one of the police officers who they caught sniffing around, when our heroes burst in, and, amidst a shower of scalpels, manage to save their colleague and shoot their way out of horror hospital? The heroes then throw themselves through a plate glass window, seconds before the whole building is demolished in an explosion set off by the clinic administrator to cover his tracks.

Bang. The end.

There, what do you think? A potentially good idea for a horror flick?

Possibly, but the really scary thing is that this ‘plot’ is based, pretty closely, on a series of real-life goings on at the Santa Rita clinic here in Milan. Fourteen quacks have ended up in handcuffs, including the administrator, as a result of their little ‘operations for income generation’ fiddle.

The motive? Money. Nothing more, nothing less.

Italy’s money motivated doctors have been in the news quite a few times recently – see my ‘A complex Complex‘ and ‘Blind Cheek‘ posts for a little more evidence.

By the way, if you are not feeling too good, I can recommend the perfect place for treatment. You won’t feel a thing, I promise you. Cue: Evil laugh.

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