Last summer, the little town of Manzanita had a 4th of July party and a small parade, during which one of the onlookers bumped into a 92-year-old woman, leaving a scratch that didn't seem to want to stop bleeding. As it happened, Tillamook County General Hospital had an ambulance on standby for the event, so she asked for a band-aid. The medics on duty checked her blood pressure, cleaned the scratch, and applied a bandage.
In November, a bill for $765 arrived.
Well, after considerable hassle and runaround, an amicable settlement was reached and the hospital agreed to waive the charges (which, of course, likely means that it was simply divvied up and packed into the bills sent to other patients). There's a reason why it's a good idea to keep a first-aid kit in your car.
Also in Tillamook County, the Tillamook cheese plant dumped 50 workers as they shut down most of the packaging operations at the original site in Tillamook. That's a lot of family-wage jobs for any small coastal community to lose; impacting not only the individuals and their families, but sending a ripple - if not a small tsunami - throughout the town. The Creamery Association did give the workers severance packages to ease the pain somewhat - though the packages were accompanied by a gag order forbidding the former employees from talking about the plant or its operations. Management described it as "very common sections of severance agreements", but a certain odor still clings to it, especially in view of how top-heavy the organization has become: Ceo, VPs, Directors, SR Managers, Managers, Assistant Managers, Supervisors, Leads...
Another organization that's grown far too big.
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