Opening Slap 

It’s 2:47 am.
Your dog is limping, bleeding, panting — something’s wrong.
You drive to the nearest 24-hour vet hospital. Within 15 minutes, a qualified professional is running tests. A scan is ordered. Anaesthesia is prepped. A surgeon is on standby. The whole system clicks into place — not because your dog is insured or because you're someone important, but because this is how the system is meant to work when a living creature is in distress.

Now rewind. It’s your child who’s hit their head. They’re vomiting. Drifting in and out. You’re trying not to panic.

You rush to the nearest emergency department — public, of course, because the private one “doesn’t often do emergencies.” You wait. And wait. And wait some more.

A nurse finally glances over and delivers the sacred mantra: “We’ll monitor.” No scan. No sense of urgency. No doctor whose name isn’t mumbled. But oh — they do have questions. Not about your child’s head injury, mind you. No, no. They want to know your address. Your marital status. Your preferred gender pronouns. Even your religion.

Because clearly, nothing diagnoses cranial trauma better than a solid understanding of your spiritual alignment and what box you tick on a census form.

Your child’s brain might be swelling, but relax — the system is meticulously compiling a diversity profile. Medical urgency? That’s secondary to bureaucratic inclusivity.

You’re not in an emergency room. You’re in a data-harvesting kiosk with fluorescent lighting. And unless your child starts bleeding out a QR code, no one’s coming.

Funny how your pet dog gets faster triage, better customer service, and more immediate access to surgical intervention than your daughter. One is called healthcare. The other is veterinary medicine. And the latter wins hands down.

It would be hilarious if it weren’t so perverse.

The Uncomfortable Truth

We’re not supposed to say this out loud.
It feels too dystopian, too cynical — too damn true.

But here it is:

In a country like Australia, your dog is more likely to get urgent, responsive, high-quality medical care at 3 am than your child.

And not just slightly more. Dramatically more. Systemically more. Relentlessly more.

Let’s compare:

• Veterinary emergency hospitals are open 24/7.
  Human GP clinics shut at 5 pm — if you’re lucky.

• Vets take you in immediately.
  Public hospitals make you “wait and see” — even for head trauma.

• Veterinarians don't require a referral.
  Private hospitals do — and they’ll often reject emergency cases outright.

• Your dog can get a CT scan in the middle of the night.
  Your child? “We don’t scan unless symptoms worsen.” Translation: let’s roll the dice.

• Your dog’s surgery can be performed before sunrise.
  Your child might still be in the waiting room by then — next to the drunk guy who just pissed himself.

This isn’t a fluke. It’s a sad reality of the architecture of the system.

Veterinary care in Australia is driven by service, designed for access, and responsive to urgency.

Human healthcare is a fortress of policy, paralysed by gatekeeping, and allergic to initiative unless a computer says “code blue.”

And no, it’s not because animals are easier or less complex. That’s a lazy excuse.

It’s because we treat animal pain as something immediate, while human suffering must pass through layers of moral assessment, bureaucratic filters, and institutional risk and liability management.

The dog doesn’t need to “prove” it deserves urgent care. It’s enough that it’s breathing, bleeding, or breaking down.

Humans? We’re assumed guilty until triaged.

When Bureaucracy Trumps Urgency: The Tragic Tale of Joe Massa

This isn't just a hypothetical scenario. In September 2024, two-year-old Joe Massa was taken to Northern Beaches Hospital after vomiting overnight. Despite presenting with a dangerously high heart rate and signs of severe dehydration (hypovolemia), he was misclassified as a lower-priority patient. His parents' pleas for intravenous fluids were denied. Joe waited over two hours for a bed whilst being medically unmonitored, during which his condition deteriorated. He suffered a cardiac arrest and was transferred to Sydney Children's Hospital, where he died due to brain damage.

Systemic Failures and Government Response

An internal investigation acknowledged a failure to recognise the severity of Joe's condition and delays in treatment. The NSW government has since pledged to overhaul health protocols, including introducing "Joe's Law" to ban public-private partnerships in acute care hospitals, aiming to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Additionally, the government plans to rename the existing 'REACH' protocol to 'Joe's Rule', enhancing the process for escalating concerns about a patient's condition. Joe's parents are advocating for a public, independent review of the hospital's emergency department to prevent other families from enduring the same preventable nightmare.

This wasn’t an isolated case. I’ve personally experienced something eerily similar. On two separate occasions, I had to take my daughter to emergency after she fell and hit her head. Each time, we were assured—almost dismissively—that everything was fine. No scan was deemed necessary. But my wife and I, unconvinced, pressed harder. We insisted. Eventually, a scan was done. What they initially brushed off as a harmless bump, they also brushed off from the hospital entirely—sending us home, only for us to return hours later to dance through the same bureaucratic hoop-jumping routine. More delays, more suffering, more procedural limbo, only to eventually arrive at the same place we should’ve been hours earlier. It was healthcare by obstacle course—except the prize at the end wasn’t reassurance, but a diagnosis of an expanding internal bleed and a skull fracture. She required immediate surgery and ICU care.

Unfortunately, this isn’t rare. In fact, it’s disturbingly common. Many—perhaps most—Australians who encounter the emergency system know this pattern all too well: the initial dismissal, the slow unravelling of urgency, the long wait to be taken seriously. Especially in emergencies, the default response often seems to be: underplay, delay, and deflect—until it’s too obvious to ignore.

And let’s be clear—this is not simply about medical mistakes. Mistakes happen. Humans err. This was far more than that. It was a systemic failure. The specialist assigned to her case was visibly exhausted, barely able to communicate, running on what seemed like muscle memory. Trapped within a system designed less for healing and more for legal insulation, they were ticking compliance boxes just to remain eligible to practise—performing the rituals required to access the facilities, constrained by monitoring systems and so-called stoic, pseudo-professional guidelines that slowly erode the very humanness required for care. Add to that the ever-looming presence of insurance pressures and legal liabilities, and what you get is a practitioner who may be willing to convert concern into action, but is algorithmically prevented from doing so.

And this, in a nation that paradoxically has thousands of qualified, willing medical professionals—many trained at world-class institutions—ready to contribute but locked out by layers of bureaucratic theatre.

The problem isn’t that help doesn’t exist. The problem is the system itself—how it's designed, who it empowers, and how it prevents capable people from stepping in. It’s the policy hoops, accreditation mazes, and institutional gatekeeping that suffocate the very care they claim to uphold. And those who suffer most aren’t just the patients. It’s everyone involved—families, practitioners, and the very integrity of healthcare as a human-centred endeavour.

The Ritual of Care — Without the Care

It’s not just that the system fails. It’s that it performs care instead of actually delivering it.

You walk into an emergency department expecting urgency. What you get is theatre—scripted lines, hollow protocols, ticking boxes to prove compliance rather than provide relief. Triage isn't triage — it's bureaucratic cosplay, where a child with a swelling brain is told to “wait and see” while a clipboard gets more attention than their vital signs.

This is not negligence by accident. It’s neglect by design.

Healthcare in this country has become a masterclass in covering one’s ass. Staff are more afraid of deviating from protocol than of losing a life. The safest thing you can do as a professional today? Do nothing without system approval. Let the child crash — but make sure the paperwork’s perfect.

And God forbid you try to escalate.

Because if you push, advocate, or question the slow-motion absurdity unfolding in front of you, you’re “difficult.” “Disruptive.” A problem that now has security’s attention. Until, of course, the real problem dies. Then suddenly, the system is full of apologies, investigations, and vague commitments to "review processes."

Joe Massa’s death wasn’t a glitch. It was a proof point. And an absolutely tragic one. This is a demonstration of what happens when institutions prioritise legal insulation, data collection, and ideological performance over the ancient, sacred urgency of responding to a suffering human being. And the disheartening truth is that this is preventable.

You’re Not in Danger — You’re Just “Being Difficult”

Now, let’s be clear. If your child is bleeding from the head, vomiting, slipping into unconsciousness — and you dare raise your voice after four hours of neglect — you become the problem.

Not the system. Not the wait time. Not the mis-triage. You.

Because nothing threatens a bureaucratic institution more than a parent or caregiver who still believes in urgency and happens to so-called threaten compliance. So the moment you begin to advocate, question, or — heaven forbid — demand a scan before your child’s brain begins to swell, the tone shifts.

Suddenly, you’re “agitated.” “Aggressive.” “Making staff uncomfortable.”
The staff may have missed the cardiac arrest, but they won’t miss the opportunity to remind you that this is a “zero tolerance zone.”

And just in case you forget, they’ve installed screens like this one all over the waiting room — screens that do absolutely nothing to prevent systemic failure but are extremely effective at policing your tone.

NSW Health is a zero-tolerance zone.
Violence and verbal abuse will not be tolerated.

Sounds reasonable. Until you realise it’s not meant for violent offenders. It’s aimed at distressed parents and carers.
It’s a silent threat — a pre-emptive shield that protects dysfunction from confrontation.

Because here’s the quiet part, they don’t say out loud:
It’s easier to brand a parent “difficult” than to admit the system is broken.
It’s easier to discipline tone than to fix protocol. (Check the article “The Sin of Tone”)
It’s easier to create a culture of fragility than one of responsibility.

So instead of examining the mental models, ethical blind spots, or gross misalignments in values that lead to the preventable death of children, they slap up a screen and call it safety.

This isn’t healthcare.
It’s institutional gaslighting, dressed up as professional decorum.

And the more the system collapses, the more aggressively it will project this kind of performative virtue — policing emotions, flattening concern into “disruption,” and confusing dissent with abuse.

The System Design

So, how did we get here, to a country where your dachshund gets more decisive care than your daughter?

Simple. Veterinary care is designed to serve. Human healthcare is designed to manage.

Let’s peel it back..

Veterinary Care is Market-Driven

It’s transactional. Efficient. Brutally clear.

• You pay. They act.

• No one checks if you’re on the right tier of coverage. No one debates whether a scan is “clinically indicated” according to a 27-page guideline.

• There’s no "come back next week" or “sit tight and observe.”

They see suffering. They intervene.
Because in the veterinary model, service trumps protocol.

Human Healthcare is System-Controlled

It’s bureaucratised. Obstructive. Obsessed with process over outcome.

• Your private insurance? Mostly useless in an actual emergency.

• Your willingness to pay? Irrelevant — you’ll still be told to go to public ED.

Even private hospitals — those shiny temples of modern care — will turn you away if you’re bleeding at the wrong angle, or without a GP referral stamped before 4 pm.

Because the system isn’t built for urgency. It’s built for liability avoidance, political optics, and cost containment.

Pets Are Seen as Patients. People Are Seen as Risks.

A dog with a broken leg is a priority.
A human with a head injury is a liability.

The vet sees an opportunity to help.
The hospital sees a possible lawsuit, a funding complication, and a resource drain.

You might be lucky and get someone who genuinely cares. But they’ll still be strangled by the system they work in.

Meanwhile, the vet has already prepped anaesthetic.

And the punchline?

If a vet mistreats your dog, they risk losing your business.
If a hospital mishandles your child, they call it standard procedure — and send you a bill for parking.

Systems Don’t Oppress Us. We Do.

By training, I’m a system designer.
I know how systems work — and more importantly, what they’re made of.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Systems are not machines that run themselves.
They are not autonomous demons.
They don’t wake up at night and decide to punish children and glorify protocols.

No.

Systems are built, maintained, subscribed to, and given life by people.

And here’s the line I want etched into the core of this entire conversation:

Systems are made by people, implemented by people, followed by people, believed by people, and demanded by people.

Yes, even the most monstrous systems carry the fingerprints of human moods, intentions, and ways of Being.

Enter the Being Framework.

This is not a conversation about who’s to blame.
It’s a conversation about who’s being what, in positions of power, design, and practice.

Because what gives rise to these systems — and what sustains them — is not spreadsheets or protocols.
It’s the ways of Being we bring into every room, every board meeting, every emergency ward.

Let’s talk about some of those:

Care (as Mood)

When Care is present in the mood of the practitioner, you feel it.
You feel it in the nurse who stays after her shift, not out of obligation, but because she cares.
You feel it in the paediatrician who explains things like your child matters — because they do.

But when Care is absent? You feel that too.
Cold rooms. Delayed decisions. Shrugged shoulders.
A mood of indifference dressed up in “clinical neutrality.”

And yes, often that Care is there, burning quietly behind layers of systemic constraint.
The nurse wants to act. The doctor knows what’s needed.
But systemic gatekeeping is stronger than humane caring, resulting in the incongruence between people’s care and what’s actually prioritised and made accessible.

Authenticity

Authenticity leads to alignment.
It means not just doing the job, but showing up as someone who is truly there—in integrity, in truth, and in presence.

And that’s exactly what many health practitioners do once you make it past the bureaucratic maze.
And it’s often beautiful.
You land, finally, not in a hospital, but in a pocket of humanity.
You meet the nurse with the beautiful heart, the one who sees your child, not your Medicare code.

Now let’s take a look at this..

You meet the doctor imported from the so-called “third world” —
Graduated top of their class in a university more rigorous than anything we have here in “advanced” Australia. Only to be made to jump through flaming bureaucratic hoops before they’re allowed to legally care for your family.

And once they are?
They become your lifeline. Your protector. Your miracle worker.

They didn’t make the system — they survived it.
They didn’t design the cages — they operate with integrity inside them.

Responsibility, Commitment, and Proactivity

Responsibility doesn’t mean being burdened or taking blame.
It means standing in response to reality, not hiding behind it.

Commitment is the active stance of care. The decision to devote and show up.

Proactivity is the willingness to act, even in constraining conditions, especially when nobody else is.

And many health professionals do exactly that — day in, day out — even beyond their job description, beyond what they’re paid for, and often beyond what the system rewards.

That’s Being in integrity.

So What’s the Real Issue?
The issue isn’t the nurse.
It isn’t the doctor.
It isn’t even the immigrant specialist we forced to re-prove themselves five times over before letting them pick up a stethoscope.

No — the real issue is rooted in structures that both the elite class of policymakers and bureaucratic architects put in place, and the crowds who enable them.

It’s the Elite, who engineer narratives and design systems from the comfort of their offices, often having never set foot in an ER at 3 am with an injured child.
They don’t know the difference between a tension headache and a seizure, but they are the ones drafting the rules on how care is rationed, reported, and restricted.
They moralise freely about tobacco, firearms, and personal choices, yet when it comes to a system that kills by delay, denies by design, and degrades through neglect…
They hide behind vanity metrics, theoretically sound but practically questionable budgets, and unexamined talking points that lack meaning.

But they’re not alone.

The Crowd plays its part too — deferring, conforming, rationalising.
They say things like “It’s crap, but it’s free” and convince themselves that politeness is more important than dignity.
They settle into quiet resignation, shrugging off systemic dysfunction as inevitable or better than some foreign caricature they’ve been taught to fear.
They don’t just obey the rules. They protect them.

As explored in the companion piece "The Silent Weight of Leadership: The Grace of Responsibility, the Illusion of Power, and the Betrayal of Conformity", these roles aren’t just social—they’re existential choices.
Every individual eventually aligns with one: the Leader, who takes responsibility and aligns with reality; the Elite, who manipulates responsibility to maintain control; or the Crowd, who avoids responsibility by dissolving into conformity.

And so, what we see in our healthcare systems is not simply bad policy. It stems from bad faith (distorted intentions from the get-go) and is the result of how we, collectively, are choosing to Be.

Authentic Sustainability Isn’t About Optics. It’s About Ontology.

In my upcoming book on Authentic Sustainability, I argue this plainly:

A system is not sustainable just because it exists.
A system is only sustainable if it’s in ontological integrity —
If it can keep working without cannibalising the people it claims to serve.

That includes healthcare.

It includes how we design it, fund it, allow it, and how we show up inside it.

Because ultimately:

There is no sustainable system without sustainable ways of Being.

Let’s examine this more closely.

This isn’t just about being “caring” in the sentimental sense.
We’re talking about Care as a Mood — an ontological mood that sits at the epicentre of how we relate to what matters.

Care impacts how you relate to what matters to you and influences you in such a way that you ensure the matters and people you care about are supported, protected or dealt with in the best manner possible.
(Tashvir, 2021)

When Care is present, we prioritise. We attend. We respond.
We invest time, attention, and resources in what we deem important — even if it doesn’t serve us directly.

We’ve all seen this in action.

That nurse, underpaid, overworked, and emotionally drained, who still notices your child’s subtle distress before the machine does.

That specialist, buried under regulatory paperwork, who still finds a moment to sit down and speak to you like a human being.

They are not doing this because the system rewards it.
They are doing it because they Care. Ontologically. Deeply.

But when Care is absent or misplaced, the system becomes cold, reactive, and selective.
You get what we have now:

• A system that worships compliance while ignoring critical outcomes.

• Bureaucrats who show infinite “Care” for risk mitigation policies, but none for the child seizing in the waiting room.

• Leaders who care passionately about politically safe topics — firearms, tobacco, recycling bins — but cannot muster the courage or clarity to fix the systems that literally decide who lives or dies.

That’s what happens when Care as a mood is fractured — when it’s no longer connected to a clear value structure, or when it’s overextended into performative noise.

“An unhealthy relationship with care indicates that you may often defer making decisions or avoid taking action in certain areas… You may be inclined to neglect, pass or abdicate responsibility… or flit from one matter to another, leaving most of them incomplete while forsaking fulfilment.”
(Tashvir, 2021)

Sound familiar?

It’s not that they don’t care about anything.
It’s that they care about the wrong things — in the wrong order — for the wrong reasons.

And so, the integrity of the system collapses — not because it wasn’t engineered well, but because it is being inhabited by individuals whose Being is out of integrity.

This is why the Being Framework matters.
This is why Authentic Sustainability matters.

Because no matter how technically sophisticated, no system can thrive if it is built and run by people who lack ontological clarity, responsibility, and care.

Care is not a checkbox. It’s the heartbeat of action. Without it, you don’t have a system. You have a shell.

The Bastardisation of Care – When a Word Loses Its Spine

Let’s unpack care. Yes, that word everyone loves to toss around like confetti at a bureaucratic wedding.
“We care about your feedback.”
“Patient-centred care.”
“Because we care.”

With so much caring going on, one might assume the world is practically cradled in a warm, cosmic hug. And yet somehow, despite all this performative compassion, people lie in emergency waiting rooms for hours, unheard and unseen, while posters warn them not to be abusive to the very system that’s abandoning them.

It’s almost as if the word care has been kidnapped, sedated, and forced to write marketing copy that sounds caring enough.

But in the Being Framework, Care is not a mood board slogan or an HR training module.
It’s a Mood—a structural, ontological orientation that governs how you relate to what matters.

We’ve already touched on it, but below is the full ontological distinction of Care as a Mood:

Being Framework Ontological Distinction of Care

Care impacts how you relate to what matters to you and influences you in such a way that you ensure the matters and people you care about are supported, protected or dealt with in the best manner possible. Care leads you to address whatever is necessary to nurture the person or matter and dedicate the appropriate level of time, resources and attention to them. Care is considered the epicentre or focal point of Being as, without care, nothing of importance can be achieved. When you care about something, you pay attention to it; you value it and it becomes a priority. Care influences how likely you are to make decisions or take action based on the level of value you ascribe to that person, relationship or matter.

A healthy relationship with care indicates that you have clarity around your value structure – what you value most – enabling you to prioritise matters effectively. You give those matters the requisite consideration and attention to achieve the intended outcome while avoiding damage or minimising risk. This may extend to those areas to which you choose to attach importance, influencing you to make decisions and take relevant action regardless of whether it affects you directly.

An unhealthy relationship with care indicates that you may often defer making decisions or avoid taking action in certain areas, particularly outside your sphere of perceived interest. You may be inclined to neglect, pass or abdicate responsibility and be apprehensive about the future. Others may consider you biased or that your judgement is clouded in areas of particular interest to you. Alternatively, you may be distracted, as everything becomes your priority. You may refuse to let go of whatever matters come your way as you are constantly fearful of missing out. Consequently, you may flit from one matter to another, leaving most of them incomplete while forsaking fulfilment.

Reference: Tashvir, A. (2021). BEING (p. 203). Engenesis Publications.

When Care is present in a healthy way, you don’t just nod politely or put a rainbow badge on your email signature. You pay attention, prioritise, protect, and nurture what matters. You give time, energy, and thought to what you value, not out of obligation, but out of ontological alignment.

But what happens when a system, say, a healthcare system, lacks a healthy relationship with Care?

Let’s connect the dots.

Healthcare Without Care: When a System Stops Valuing What Matters

An unhealthy relationship with Care shows up when:

• Decisions are deferred or entirely avoided, especially outside one's narrow scope of interest. Sound familiar?
  Think: patients being bounced around like hot potatoes because departments operate in silos and no one owns the whole.

• Neglect and abdication masquerade as protocol.
  Think: six-hour ER waits, while screens bark out warnings instead of welcomes.

• Overload and fragmentation take over.
  Everything becomes urgent, and nothing gets resolved. Burnt-out staff flitting between tasks, unable to finish or follow through. Patients half-treated, half-informed, wholly lost.

• Fear of missing out becomes structural paranoia.
  Politicians promise everything to everyone—mental health initiatives, aged care reforms, regional clinics—while most of it collapses under the weight of too many false priorities and not enough structural clarity.

This isn’t just administrative inefficiency. It’s ontological disintegration.

The System itself is operating from a fractured Mood of Care, one that oscillates between indifference and hyper-vigilance. It either doesn’t prioritise what matters or tries to care about everything performatively while doing nothing substantively.

There is no discernment. No clarity of values. No Integrity in the sense of wholeness or consistency.

And that’s the deeper tragedy: not that healthcare lacks money, staff, or resources, but that it lacks the internal architecture of Care to prioritise, attend, protect and deliver what it claims to serve. Its Being is misaligned. It performs care but doesn’t embody it.

The Cure? Ontological Integrity, Not Sentimental Slogans

If Care is the epicentre of Being, then healthcare without real Care is a contradiction.
A hospital full of machines, policies, and disempowered people is not a system—it’s a simulation.

Until Care becomes structurally embodied—not just spoken about—we will continue treating symptoms while ignoring the disease: a collapse of Being, cloaked in the language of compassion whilst lacking its true impact and potential.

So next time a screen flashes, “We care about your safety,” ask yourself:

Do they?
Or has care simply become a polite way to say, “Please comply with your own dehumanisation”?

The Ethics Inversion

We are told that human healthcare is governed by principles.
Compassion. Dignity. Universal access. Equity.

But peel off the branding, and what you get is a system where your worth is protocolled and processed, before it, if you're lucky, gets witnessed.

Meanwhile, your dog—yes, your drooling, tail-chasing, half-feral companion—gets treated as a living being in distress.

Let’s talk dignity.

In the vet hospital, your dog is met with urgency, not suspicion.
No one interrogates you first. No one questions whether the dog “really needs that scan” or whether it’s just being “overly sensitive.”
Pain is assumed. Action is taken.

In the human hospital, your child is reduced to a triage code and an insurance category.
You’re asked to wait. To justify. To explain.
Your anxiety is treated as hysteria.
Your presence is tolerated, not respected.

And then you’re handed a clipboard.

Let’s talk compassion.

Veterinarians will call you at 3 am to update you on your dog’s condition.
They’ll cry with you if things go badly.
They’ll give you time. Space. Humanity.

Try calling the emergency department to ask about your child.
Try getting a straight answer. Or a timely update.
If you're lucky, someone might sigh and say, “We're doing what we can.”

But you’ll know — your child has entered a machine that doesn’t have a soul.

Let’s talk equality.

Veterinary care doesn’t pretend to be “universal.”
It doesn’t moralise. It doesn’t perform.

It simply works. If you pay, you’re served.

Meanwhile, human healthcare shouts about “free and fair access” — and then ration care, defer urgency, and filter help through layers of paperwork and protocol.

The hypocrisy is stunning:
In the system built for humans, being human has become a disadvantage.

The Lie of ‘Advanced’ Healthcare

Australia loves to call its healthcare system "world-class."
We’re told we should be proud — grateful even — for our public hospitals, Medicare, and safety nets.

And yes, on paper, it’s impressive:

• Universal access

• Highly trained professionals

• Modern infrastructure

• Robust funding

But that’s just it. It’s a system that looks good in theory and collapses in practice.

Let’s stop mistaking complexity for advancement.

What good is a billion-dollar system if it can’t scan your child’s head in the middle of the night?
What’s the value of a private health policy when it can’t get you through the door of a hospital after hours?

You can have the most sophisticated machines, the most credentialed staff, and still be utterly dysfunctional at the very thing that matters most:
Responding to urgent human need, in real time, without theatre.

We have made a religion out of procedures.

Want a scan? First, a referral.
Want that referral? See a GP.
GP not available? Try urgent care.
Urgent care says it’s not urgent enough? Wait for a bed in ED.
Make it to ED? Great — now sit next to a guy screaming at the wall until someone feels sorry enough to prioritise you.

Meanwhile, a dog with a limp is already prepped for surgery in the back room of a vet hospital with half the budget and twice the responsiveness.

Modern healthcare isn’t broken. It’s functioning exactly as built:

• To manage optics, not outcomes.

• To avoid liability, not alleviate pain and suffering.

• To distribute delays evenly and call it “fairness.”

• To pacify the masses while quietly reserving real access for those with backchannels and influence.

And while we call that civilised…

We point at countries with chaos and corruption, while proudly presiding over a system that delivers theatre instead of care.

If this is progress, bring back the village healer. At least they made eye contact.

The Real Question

So here we are.

We’ve built a healthcare system so "advanced" that it can detect microscopic tumours, sequence your genome, and perform robotic surgery.
But we can’t guarantee an injured child gets medical care before sunrise.

A system that tells us we’re lucky to have it, even as it shrugs at urgent need.
That congratulates itself on being universal, while failing to act universally when it matters most.

And somehow… we accept it. We perform gratitude. We internalise the delays, the dismissals, the systemic apathy — as if this is just the cost of being part of something civilised.

Meanwhile, your dog?
She limps. You pay. She gets treated.

No debate. No clipboard. No national myth to uphold.

So the real question isn’t:

Why does veterinary care feel faster, better, and more human than our human system?

We already know why.

The real question is this:

At what point did we decide that being a human was a disqualification for receiving urgent care with dignity?

And if the system treats your suffering as a burden and your urgency as an inconvenience..
Can you still call it healthcare?

Or is it just managed decline with a glossy interface?

A Nation That Can’t Hear Itself: When Systemic Dysfunction Becomes Cultural Norm

For example, let’s take a look at Australia’s healthcare system.
Despite its universal structure and largely free access, the system is often slow, impersonal, and lacking in basic human dignity. Yet, remarkably, most Australians tolerate this with minimal resistance. Why?

First, there’s a deep cultural current of stoicism and low-drama norms—a national ethos of “don’t make a fuss” or “she’ll be right”. Expressing distress is often perceived as overreacting. Many internalise their suffering to avoid appearing entitled or dramatic, even when genuine concern is warranted.

Second, Australians exhibit a high degree of trust in institutions. Whether it’s healthcare, education, or government, the prevailing belief is that these systems, though flawed, are fundamentally sound. The sentiment becomes: “If I waited six hours, it must’ve been necessary.” Even when people feel neglected or dehumanised, they tend to assume the system still knows best.

Third is what we might call the equality trap. Because the healthcare system is universal, many take pride in its fairness, even when that fairness translates into inefficiency or indignity. The unspoken mantra becomes: “At least we all suffer equally.” In this mindset, dignity is sacrificed for sameness, as if politeness and patience were more important than responsiveness or ethical care.

There’s also a lack of comparative awareness. Most Australians have never experienced healthcare systems that are faster or more person-centred. While they might complain in private, they lack lived alternatives for contrast. Horror stories from the U.S.—like “you pay $10,000 for a scan”—only serve to reinforce defensive loyalty to the local system, however dysfunctional it may be.

Then comes what can only be called bureaucratic hypnosis. The system is buried in layers of process, policy, and passive communication. Over time, people start to believe “this is just how healthcare works.” Screens displaying warnings like “abusive behaviour will not be tolerated” and emotionally disengaged staff generate an atmosphere of submission, not agency. People comply—not because they believe it’s right, but because resistance feels futile or socially unacceptable.

A lack of philosophical and ethical discourse compounds all of this. There is little mainstream conversation about what dignity, presence, or care really mean in the context of health. Politicians and media focus on budgets, waitlists, and staffing, but rarely question the ontological structure of the system itself. In effect, function is prioritised over essence, and the Being of both the patient and practitioner is lost in translation.

What remains is a state of quiet resignation, not satisfaction. People do complain, but typically only in passing, after the fact, and with a weary shrug. The common refrain? “It’s crap, but it’s free.” Outrage fades into indifference, not because the situation is acceptable, but because the only imagined alternative is something worse—usually some caricature of the American system. And so, the cycle continues.

And yet, paradoxically, if you were to walk into an emergency department in Iran—yes, that “developing” or gasp “third-world” country—you might be surprised (or rather, disturbed) to discover that things can actually work. Emergencies are often handled with urgency, patients are treated with basic human decency, and costs are laughably low. A full consultation, X-ray, and medication might set you back less than a Sydney lunch. Doctors—those same morally upright professionals Western institutions claim to embody—actually see you quickly, speak to you directly, and treat your pain as real. Shocking, isn’t it?

What’s more scandalous is that the system is often guided not by soulless bureaucracy but by moral obligation, professional ethics, and—brace yourself—a sense of public duty. Yes, in this “backward” place so many have been trained to look down upon, healthcare workers behave as if they are responsible for people’s lives, not just managing risk or avoiding litigation.

So, while Iran may not rank high in glossy Western development indices or international perception games, it seems to have preserved something rare: a functional relationship between urgency, ethics, and service. Something that wealthier nations, in all their enlightened progress, seem to have outsourced, automated, deprioritised or forgotten.

But this isn’t just about hospital logistics. What we’re observing is a deeper phenomenon—one that the Metacontent Discourse and the Nested Theory of Sense-Making help make visible.

Iran’s approach—however imperfect in other domains—reflects a collective metacontent that holds care, responsibility, and accountability as central to its shared sense-making architecture. The dominant mental models are shaped not just by policies, but by centuries of inherited ethical narratives, spiritual axioms, and embodied moral assumptions. These are not shallow performances of “values,” but structurally embedded frames of what matters and why. In this context, “helping the suffering” is not an optional virtue—it’s an ontological commitment.

In the Nested Theory of Sense-Making, Iran’s healthcare system can be understood as functioning from a different cognitive map—one where axiology (what is good), epistemology (what is valid), and ethics (what is right) are nested within a larger worldview that doesn’t place efficiency above all else. Instead, it locates human dignity, urgency, and relational trust closer to the centre of the structure.

This doesn’t make Iran immune to dysfunction. But it reveals that what a society collectively sees, feels, and prioritises—its Metacontent—is not universal. It is constructed, reinforced, and transmitted through language, religion, family, law, myth, education, and cultural memory.

And that’s why one system may treat you like a barcode waiting for a room, while another, despite all its economic and political struggles, may treat you like a human being whose pain actually matters.

In the end, it’s not just a healthcare difference. It’s a metacontent difference. And until this is seen, most reforms will remain skin-deep.

And yet, while all this unfolds, Australia continues to market itself as the gold-standard destination—the ideal land of opportunity for global talent, particularly those on our Skilled Occupation List, including doctors and medical specialists. We brandish our lifestyle, public system, and quality of life like trophies, luring practitioners from high-performing, often underappreciated healthcare ecosystems—places like Iran and India, where many physicians are trained at elite universities with far more clinical volume and intensity than their Western counterparts will ever experience during their training years.

These professionals arrive, only to find themselves stonewalled by layers of bureaucratic theatre: endless exams, accreditation hoops, bridging programs, supervised placements, and licensing delays. All of this in the name of “quality assurance.” And yes, let’s be honest—there have been and will always be a few individuals who try to game the system or misrepresent their credentials. But these are exceptions, not norms. They do not justify a system that structurally disenfranchises hundreds of highly competent, globally trained practitioners from contributing meaningfully, especially in a country that claims to be in a healthcare workforce crisis.

Let’s not kid ourselves.

The so-called “shortage” of specialists in Australia is not just a consequence of population growth or rural undersupply. It is also the product of deliberate structural bottlenecks. For years, we’ve had specialist colleges with monopoly-like control, restricting the number of training placements, preserving exclusivity, and thus maintaining high patient-to-specialist ratios that ensure demand stays inflated and fees remain protected.

Behind the scenes, powerful pharmaceutical lobbies, university funding models, and opaque links between policymakers and industry bodies quietly shape medical education, policy design, and supply regulation. Public universities charge enormous sums for domestic and international medical degrees—often with substantial backing from government subsidies and private sector interests—yet do not scale graduate output to meet real national need. Why? Because flooding the market with more doctors would reduce scarcity, and scarcity is profitable.

Meanwhile, many local graduates are funnelled into General Practice, where burnout is rising, remuneration is declining, and the prestige gap remains wide. Specialists—especially in procedural fields—continue to benefit from controlled scarcity, while policy makers feign helplessness, hiding behind jargon-laden inquiries and delayed reform.

This is not a conspiracy. It’s a systemic lack of integrity in Being that determines the course of our health and lives. It's infrastructure masquerading as meritocracy. And it is failing—not because we lack talent or resources, but because we refuse to realign incentives, restructure power dynamics, or redesign for dignity and systemic integrity.

So while the hospitals remain understaffed, and while patients wait months—sometimes years—for critical consultations or surgeries, highly trained professionals from countries we arrogantly call “developing” continue to drive Ubers and stack supermarket shelves, waiting for permission to serve.

It’s not just unethical. It’s structurally self-sabotaging.

Conclusion – The Real Illness Was Never Just Medical

What we call “healthcare” is, far too often, not a system for healing but an ecosystem for deferral of responsibility, presence, ethics, and even pain. A theatre of process where risk is managed, but Being is forgotten. Where patients are converted into metrics, and practitioners into protocol compliance units.

And yet, we dare call it advanced. Developed. Enlightened.

But development without discernment is just dressed-up dysfunction.
And universal access without universal dignity is merely an equal distribution of quiet suffering.

The uncomfortable truth is this: most of what we call progress is cosmetic.
Most reform efforts remain stuck within the same mental models, epistemologies, and axiologies that produced the very dysfunction we now politely rename “policy challenges.”

Until we confront the Metacontent—the deeper structures that shape how we make sense of health, care, and our humanity—our systems will continue to optimise for everything except what matters.

What matters is not just faster service or more funding.
It’s the return of ontological responsibility. Of ethical presence. Of the courage to see pain not as liability, but as a call to care.

Because in the end, healthcare is not a system.
It is a reflection.

And what it reflects today is not just our capacity to treat illness,
But our collective failure to treat us as human.