Like the people who loot from stores during a power outage or merchants who raise the price of goods during a shortage, the people of Haiti have learned that the milk of human kindness can curdle and go rancid when there is buck to be made.

Add to that list the Haitian hospital operators who have been accused of charging patients for medical care, which is administered with donated medicine, despite a law that all medical care will be provided for free since the Jan. 12th earthquake rocked the island-nation.

The United Nations has warned that it will stop providing free shipments of medicines to hospitals it finds are charging patients. That will be a tough threat to back up, though, since the need for medicine in the devastated country is so great.

U.N. representatives have told the Associated Press that about 12 hospitals have started to charge patients for medicine.

The money at stake is huge: With reports that a gallon of water sells for more than $10 around the capital of Port-au-Prince, the $1 million in donated drugs represent several fortunes.

At the 90 hospitals operating in the country, staff is paid with donated funds, according to a U.N. representative.

It would be nice if every person in Haiti put aside the profit motive in light of the tragedy, but that won't happen because profiting off of the misery of others is a practice as old as man.