it's weird gaining an appreciation/understanding for nepotism haha
working at this job, being a fungible interstitial between people and a cruel machine designed to crush them, has made me understand where that tendency for "you know somebody who knows somebody so will get better care" comes from. it's not loyalty or transactional, but rather like. this job is so hard and so crushing and so so under resourced and I am part of a system that enacts cruelty to people, while trying to use what little I have to shield as many of them as I can.
I cannot stress how profoundly hard it is to resist the temptation to instead pool those resources to usher two or three of those people through this process with no issue or concern or roadbump, especially when people I love are here. even at the expense of others. after spending a day telling people they have to wait years to even start a process, that their insurance company said no and they can't have surgery, that things fell through or that we failed, is just, hard. taking a break from that to go all out and bending rules and ect for someone I care about like yeah it's understandably tempting as hell haha.
To be clear I absolutely do resist it as this is healthcare lmao but having to put energy into resisting it is so interesting and surprising. I've always seen nepotism as like self evidently bad but now I'm having to,,, well, remind myself of the reasons for it being bad. if bureaucrats in healthcare had a hypocritic oath it would be to act with uniformity and continuity, to ensure that everyone receives exactly the same level of support even if that level is "I'll do what I can". that at least is still self evident to me, hopefully that doesn't change.