Bakersfield is either the Hypochondriac Capital of the World, or a vast center of insurance fraud.
Probably both.
The city is only about 300,000 people, and yet they boast easily 12 hospitals, at least that's how many I've counted.
And they all advertise on TV, relentlessly. When did emergency medical care become like shopping for a car?
"Honey, walk away... let's check out the Catholics, they're offering half off on appendectomies, and they're throwing in a CT scan to boot..."
Seriously.
And it's not just the hospitals. Cardiologists, radiologists, dentists, plastic surgeons... it's a peddler's bazaar. Three quarters of any commercial break is medical services. And all of them pushing their state-of-the-art CT scanner.
When did CT scanners become the new flat screen?
But here's the thing... all the doctors hawking their wares are Indian. Not all... the plastic surgeons are mostly Iranian and the dentists appear to be mostly Chinese. But the bottom line appears to be that all the medical professionals of Bako are imported.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Actually, there's something kind of poetic about the most xenophobic people on earth completely dependent on a bunch of "ferriners" for their medical care.
At any rate, it isn't just a TV thing - on our unfortunate Swine Flu visit to the hospital a few months back you couldn't help but notice all the nursing staff appeared to be Filipino, the doctors Indian. What the hell?
Well, think about it. If you had endured 8 years of medical school, and incurred hundreds of thousands of student loan debt, what would you do with the prospect of working in Bako?
Exactly.
But to a doctor in Calcutta, Bako probably looks like a Reagan-esque "Shining City On The Hill".
Or a "Dusty Hellhole in a Valley".
Whatever. Lesser of two evils I suppose.
So they come... and bring the extended family. Now the huge Indian population here starts to make sense.
But potentially, it could be win/win - maybe all those CT scans actually expose everyone's chakras.
But that still doesn't excuse the fact you can't get decent larb in this town.
