Posted on 06/23/2014 11:48:00 AM PDT by BBell
I trained as a doctor in Caracas, Venezuela, the third most violent city in the world, just behind Deadwood and Rage Virus London. I worked every day to stem the tide of murder and suffering. So the next time you get miffed at the wait time and the weird stains on the chairs in the free clinic, spare a passing thought for us Third World doctors, who deal with stuff like ...
(Excerpt) Read more at cracked.com ...
Interesting to see how that Social experiment is going down South.
Coming to a nation near you....soon...very soon!
Including poorly trained, Third World doctors.
I have a handicapped adult daughter on Medicaid (Dallas area). The clinics I’ve taken her to in order to find a primary care physician have been horrid. Dirty, yes, stained, yes, gross, yes, third world? Probably. If I were a physician I swear I’d get down on my own hands and knees and clean my office, my pride would not allow me to do medical business in such a filthy place. When gov runs something, as most of us know, it’s a hellhole. Everyone except for the elite will soon have to be treated this way. And that crap about the U.S. being the worst in global health care, what a crock!!
Wish she could come here where the Medicaid patients are treated to the very best. Brand new hospital clinics, spic and span with great staff and the latest medical equipment. 45 minute long appointments simply to establish service. Access to all the specialists on the hospital clinic staff.
What accounts for the difference?
I can posit this and that but the ultimate answer is elusive. The Medicaid reimbursement rates here are abysmal as everywhere and we do have lots of immigrants. The state government is more liberal (of course) but it is hard to see how this results in benefits to the providers above the lousy reimbursement. It is a puzzle.
Decades ago, my family went camping with another family at Punta Banda in Baja. The guys, including my 8-yr-old son, played “dune buggy” and rolled the VW. The two men were in need of stitches as was my son, who had a head wound. I drove several miles as darkness fell to the “hospital” in Ensenada.
The emergency room was horrible. Wounds were cleaned by women with bare hands and tap water in a dented basin. Blood covered the floor from other patients/victims, it took hours to be seen. The doctors were heroes, smart, young, doing their best, sewed up my son very capably when it was our turn at last. Then, because they had no drugs on hand, we had to wake up the pharmacist down the street to have prescription for antibiotic filled, took it back to the hospital where they injected it into him.
Next day, back in CA, our regular doc commended the stitches, and only added a tetanus shot to the treatment. But our friend, who’d had 70 or more stitches, was in real trouble, had to go through surgery to clean out the wound, his arm didn’t work well for another year. PLUS, he was considered a criminal in Mexico, because he’d been driving and never could go back to Mexico again without being arrested. Not that he would, given what happened.
Moral of the story: Go to Hawaii or Florida.
If you like your third-world nightmare, you can keep your third-world nightmare.
Venezuela demanded and deserves what they got.
Try this: Medicare patients who have been paying into the system for decades are getting fewer services and far, far higher copays. Trending now and I can only hope that Medicare will be there for me if I should ever need it.
If you know anyone approaching Medicare age, urge them to have every single thing that might possibly go wrong in the next thirty years fixed NOW before they have to rely on the shrinking-daily Medicare benefits.
But why would changes to Medicare affect Texas and Washington so differently? Medicare is a federal program.
how do you keep your son from getting bit by rats when you both live in a rat infested shipping container?
Send him to America.
Perhaps we are speaking of different things. Sorry. Medicaid may be growing and doing well in WA, it’s Medicare that is sliding downhill in a hurry. Money formerly allocated to Medicare is being reallocated to Medicaid. So, for example, your mother might die because her life-saving surgery is disallowed, but the illegal immigrants are getting really good care.
foreigners getting better care?
Are we turning into Cuba?
It’s mainly the Medicare Advantage funding that was partially preempted; Medicare base and MediGap plans are pretty much same as before.
thanks. good info.
I’m 46, but this sort of scenario is what scares me to death:
I get to be 70 or so and need knee/ hip replacements. (My father needed both hips replaced in his mid 60s, fairly early, so my concern is stronger due to family history.) By that time, in the 2030s, Medicare will be so depleted — notwithstanding my having “paid in” for nearly 50 years — that I will be told, “Although hip replacement is indeed ‘indicated,’ you are too old to justify the cost. Sorry; if only you were in your 40s or younger, it would be a better ‘investment.’ We have a nice walker and a bottle of ibuprofen for you.”
Foreigners may or may not be getting better care,depending on location and various other things. For sure, services to older adults are on the wane — unless you can afford very high-end expensive insurance or are self-insured. For the average Joe/Jane, it’s scary. I do not see this trend stopping anytime soon. I do see more immigrants, legal and illegal being provided with care. It’s a matter of who is on the low end of the teeter-totter on the day YOU need medical services.
For my own health, the older I get, the more I’m super, uber, crazy about taking care of my diet, exercise, sleep, and other health requirements—including avoiding chemicals like tobacco, alcohol and prescription drugs. My doc thinks I’m phenomenal, but who knows, anyone can be in an accident or be harboring genetic stuff that will pop up when you thought you were fine. “Eat, pray, love” is rather good advice, but not in the way that particular novelist meant it. LOL
Take care, GeronL.
That post is perfect.
And avoid Julia Roberts movies released after about 2001!
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