I know that in the UK they can have 3-4 beds in delivery rooms and I thought that was disgusting.
The VA is a good example of what Obamacare will look like. When my grandfather was dying from terminal cancer in the VA, they denied him morphine because... get this... he was very very weak and it may kill him.
We discovered that if you position 3 upset girls outside a patients room and you grab every singe nurse, doctor, visitor, and orderly and cry loudly, someone shows up with a morphine drip.
That day I could have killed people with my bare hands. Seriously. But when my father had open heart surgery at a private hospital everything went so super smooth. His doctors met in his room with us all together. We had names and phone numbers. He had a nurse assigned to him that knew his meds. His room and bathroom were large, comfy and super clean. And we had people pop in all the time asking if we needed anything!
I was eventually released (after 5-days and still with discomfort) and went to the corporate apartment. The day after I was released they called at 5:30PM and told me I need to come back right away—that evening—because I had MRSA (results just in). I asked if I was contagious and they said ‘no.”
I told them no way was I going back to them, they would kill me. I hung up.
I booked a flight first thing the next morning to Texas (where home is). I landed DFW, wife picked me up and we went straight to private hospital where I was immediately admitted, private room, nice nurses and docs, heck even the orderlies were clean and kind. Completely different from the VA personnel.
In my private room (with flat screen TV), I was comfortable, quiet, recovered quickly. . .it helped being truly cared for (Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Flower Mound, TX). Oh, and daily an orderly would come by in the morning with a menu in hand and he would take my order for the day. The VA? Slop delivered from downtown LA (an hours drive from my VA hospital), no options, eat what they give you. . .did I mention it was slop?
I swear I will NEVER go to a VA hospital again—even for emergency care because I know what to expect.
(As a side note, when stationed in the UK in the 80’s my wife came down with a kidney stone—dropped her. On-base hospital closed during weekend so she was brought to the hospital in Ipswitch where it took over an hour before she was seen — all the while in great pain and hyperventilating. Eventually admitted and they discovered the kidney stone and I said, “great, when are you going to zap it?” They said, “what?” I said, “You know, use the ultrasound to pulverize the stone.” At that time they told me they had only two ultrasound kidney stone zappers in the entire UK. One was in Manchester and the other was in Westminster. My wife was admitted to one of those old-time, open bay, dozens of beds wards with linoleum floors with cracked and yellow tiles, and the beds were adjusted by the hand-crank.)
I am now done fussing.