Brady's Knee and "Never Events"

KevinMD.com has a good round-up of the current status of the post-op complications associated with the knee surgery on Tom Brady, quarterback for the New England Patriots football team.

But the most interesting bit was the following comment from another physician:

Imagine, the whole world is watching. The greatest football players going to the greatest surgeons at the greatest hospitals. An athelete at the top of his physical health.

And they can't prevent billions of years of bacterial evolution from infecting the man's knee.

Yet the clowns at the Medicare National Bank want to make perioperative infections, specifically for orthopaedic surgeries, a "never event".

You have just witnessed the ridiculous policies of a government agency gone mad. When you have the best surgeons treating the most physically fit patients at the best hospitals, with the whole world watching, and you STILL get an infection, you have no credibility as an organization when you suggest the rest of us humble simpleton providers could be perfect in our outcomes. A "never event" is just that. Never. And that is simply not possible.

If physicians are to be held to a standard of perfection, what about the politicians?