I started back to school last fall (local University). Writing major (professional/technical writing; planning to switch back to Journalism).

This semester, I'm taking an Expository Writing class. The students were instructed to pick three subjects we were passionate about; mine were the environment, homelessness, and healthcare. We were then told to break each down into three subtopics; from there, we were to pick one of the nine subtopics to write our paper about. It is to be well-thought-out, well-researched, well-documented, and should be written with an eye to being published on the national level (read: Time Magazine, NYTimes, St. Pete Times, et al).

My Expository Paper is going to be on For-Profit Hospitals Vs. Patient Care: How the Bottom Line Affects Patient Care. The reason I'm writing this is because I lost a loved one at Northside Hospital in St. Pete. It's an HCA hospital, HCA being a huge for-profit hospital chain.

I already have a stack of books for my paper (14, and that's just a start). I've googled articles on the matter, and found plenty. The articles that I'll be using come from a variety of reputable sources, including medical journals, business magazines, etc. I already have quite a lot of sources showing facts and figures on how the profit line has the ability to hurt patients. (The floors at Northside were horribly understaffed. Heck, if you can get by paying for only 2 RNs on a floor per shift as opposed to 4, what a savings! But at what cost? I wonder where the CEOs from some of the HCA hospitals send their loved ones when they're sick?)My point is that when a person goes to a hospital when they're sick, they should be assured that they will be given a fighting chance for survival. Nobody should be exposed to substandard medical care that could cost them their life.

Nobody.