Tales of an American Peasant Emergency Room Care
Have to keep talking about health care. I ran into my brother recently. He is also an American Peasant. He told me how he went to the hospital emergency room (this is a major well know hospital in a big metropolitan city) because of severe pain in his back. They did not want to treat him because the way the system works is that he is supposes to see his primary care physician not just show up at the emergency room just because his back hurts.
He then pointed out to them that there were twelve people in the waiting room wearing burkahs and he was the only one there with an insurance card. He was not leaving until he saw a doctor. They of course made him wait to see if he’d go away but they finally did see him.
In the end they prescribed a concoction of muscle relaxers and pain killers. My brother was wondering why they didn’t suggest he down them with a can of beer since that would certainly be the right combination to stop his heart. He figures he was just given a dose of “Obamacare” sort of along the lines of death panels.
Well I couldn’t go down that road with him, but it’s a story a lot of us see in emergency rooms across the country. People lined up with no insurance and no intention of paying while those of us with insurance seeking the same care are told were in the wrong place. Go away; your insurance is no good here. You weren’t referred and it is not an emergency. Put up with the pain until your primary care physician can fit you into his schedule even if that may be a matter of days.
I remember a time many years ago when you could walk into a hospital if you were in pain and just show them your insurance card and you would be treated. It was a person in pain that mattered not the health insurer’s restrictions. What happened in this country? Why do we put up with this?
Go ahead; defend the current health care system if you want to. But I’m not going to. It has been in decline for some time now. I used to be treated like a patient, now I’m treated like a paperwork headache. The system is rapidly stripping me of my dignity. Sometimes it seems like I’m being treated in a third world country.
Technology and increased knowledge have given us the best health care available in this world. Big Pharma and health insurers have made access to this care a disgrace.
