2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [99]
The Cass family, one of America’s richest, was based in Nashville. Ronald Cass, the patriarch, went into the termite business in 1945 and in ten years had the largest exterminator company in the world. Cass Exterminator was in forty states and twenty countries and by 1955 was clearing one hundred million dollars a year. Ronald’s five sons took the family fortune and had turned it into thirty billion dollars by 2000, investing in industries as varied as snack food and fertilizer. They were one of the first owners of the modern-day factory farm. After Perdue, they had the largest chicken business in the world.
They then decided to go into health care, the only business they saw with no end in sight, and they played everything perfectly. The second eldest son, Nate, had a gift for this, and he invested in private health insurance, research hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and a small but growing area, life support, taking care of the people in irreversible comas who could still live many years.
In the 2020s, the religious right grabbed control of the life-death question. Evangelicals filled the courts with lawsuits, and doctors became even more afraid to pull the plug. The same mind-set that created the need for a Walter Masters made the Cass family more money than they had ever imagined. Their Compassionate Care Facilities were unlike anything that came before, beautiful surroundings where people could go and dream, if that’s what they did, until their hearts stopped. Nate Cass invested in new equipment that was much smaller and designed in pleasing colors, so that when family members came to visit, everything looked normal. The old-fashioned heart and breathing monitors and pumps and drips were replaced with machines that were part of the bed frame, placed against the wall where visitors couldn’t even see them. All tubes were under the gowns, which were no longer hospital-like but fashioned and styled by real designers. Whenever the family came to visit, the patients wore makeup. They were presented as if they had just been outside taking a stroll, wearing nice outfits and with a glow in their cheeks, and the result was that comatose people seemed just fine, as if they were only taking a short nap.
Of course there were people who were against all of this. President Bernstein, for one. But legally, the courts wanted proof that the brain was dead. If there was any activity at all, a doctor could not euthanize without everyone, including the patient, signing off.
The evangelicals didn’t care what the brain was doing; they felt Jesus was in there no matter what. They went before juries and convinced them that even the slightest brain wave could produce a dream. One of their lawyers came up with a line that stuck: “These people could be enjoying a world that we will never know unless we are there. To end it is murder.” And as a result, the Cass family cashed in. Thousands of people slept in their centers, sometimes for a decade or more, at great cost to the government.
The President’s mother lived, if that was the right term, in a third-floor corner suite. There was pretty wallpaper in her room and a little writing desk and a small couch. There was even a ceiling fan. Air-conditioning was only turned on when someone visited, so the fan not only had a homey look but also saved the business a fortune. Why cool the rooms?
Susanna went to visit her that Friday, unannounced. When she arrived, the staff was miffed at showing anyone a patient before she was made up and prepared, but of course no one was going to keep the secretary of the Treasury out. She asked to see the President’s mother alone, which the centers did not like. They always wanted a staff member in the room so they could tell the relatives and friends how well the person was doing. “I think I saw a smile the other day,” they would say. Or, “He is doing much better today than last week.” All the kind of garbage that made the living feel better.
Susanna got her way.