WASHINGTON, DC – The American College of Surgeons was pleased to announce today that their “Operating Room Swear Jar Initiative” will soon generate enough revenue to pay off the U.S. national debt of 19 trillion dollars by early 2018. The program, instituted only 3 months ago at a local hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio as a strategy to improve surgeon behavior in the operating room (OR), has dramatically exceeded expectations.
“I thought the idea was pretty dumb at first,” reports Brian Nicholson, a general surgeon and noted skeptic of the anti-cursing initiative. “However, once I was forced to pony up $300 after a profanity-laced laparoscopic appendectomy last week, I became a true believer.”
The director of the swear jar program has been thrilled with its success. “If there’s one thing I learned in residency, you never underestimate the anger of a surgeon who has been operating for 6 hours without eating, drinking, or sitting down,” stated Kevin Cates, a vascular surgeon at Mercy Hospital in Cincinnati. “The OR Swear Jar Initiative turns every expletive-filled rant into cold, hard cash. Now, the simple mistake of cutting a knot too short can generate upwards of $10,000 in revenue.”
Shortly after the program’s debut, the American College of Surgeons mandated that every operating room in the country have a “swear jar” present during every surgery. Over the past month, the nationwide program has garnished over 600 million dollars directly from the wallets of raging surgeons. “We anticipate that by March 2018, the entire debt of the United States of America will be paid off,” announced Cates. “By July, all Americans will be given free health care, and by December, we will be straight up handing out cash to whoever wants it.”
When asked how America’s surgeons will handle the financial burden, Cates responded, “Oh they will all be desperately poor within 6 months.”
