Posted on 09/13/2017 3:25:05 PM PDT by Ennis85
Sarai was 25 years old when she died of Wilson’s disease, an inherited disorder that causes liver failure. A liver transplant could have cured her, but she was uninsured and was denied an appointment at two prominent Chicago transplant hospitals, including my own. Sarai’s plight was brought to my attention when a local religious group held a hunger strike advocating transplant access for Sarai and other uninsured patients. When she died, her congregation marched seven miles, holding her photograph and lugging coffins emblazoned with her name, to launch a sit-in in front of Northwestern University Hospital. Her death certificate named liver disease as her cause of death, but that’s not true. The real cause was inequality. If the United States had a Medicare-for-all health insurance system, she might have been saved.
In nearly 40 years as a doctor, I witnessed time and again how inequality kills. Those without health insurance, such as Sarai (there are almost 30 million in the country), often cannot access the most basic care, let alone complex specialty care. But the problem is more serious than a simple lack of health insurance. What insurance card you hold can literally be a matter of life and death.
Consider how our current multi-payer health insurance system affects hospitals, clinics and patients. I have practiced at three hospitals along a two-mile strip of Ogden Avenue in Chicago. I spent 17 years at Cook County Hospital, now the John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, rising from intern to chief of general medicine. When I practiced at Cook County Hospital, it was largely a hospital for the uninsured. Despite many improvements, largely because of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, many services, such as screening colonoscopies and hip replacements, are still beyond reach for patients and their doctors.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Notice they hever say “its time i took a lower salary” or “its time the hospital stopped charging $16 for an aspirin” or its time to cut the frigging hr department or its time to lower the outrageous prices for certain procedures....
Ask the canadians and brits about big brother healthcare.
All the compasion of the dmv, all the speed of the court system, and all the intelligence of the irs.
I had occasion to deal with Canada’s single payer system via OHIP, Ontario’s medical provider. The closest thing to it I’ve ever experienced was going to a US post office when it’s moderately busy.
They had a singular lack of enthusiasm for their jobs, could care less if you knew it, sat around doing nothing as ‘patients’ waited in line and provided followup if it was absolutely convenient for them to do so.
I would say they treated you as an object rather than a person, but that wold be high praise. Your presence at the ‘clinic’ was resented.
Corrected headline
“My greed prevented me from treating sick patients who couldn’t pay my exorbitant rates, so I let them die”
My wife’s Dad was a career Coast Guard guy so the family got free government health care.
She knows we’re screwed if single payer ever passes.
My wife’s Dad was a career Coast Guard guy so the family got free government health care.
She knows we’re screwed if single payer ever passes.
For people who want single payer health care systems, all they need to do to predict the future of single payer is to look towards the VA health system at its worst.
Impossible to fire bad employees, even when they break the law. Sub-standard care. Most importantly, there will be nowhere to go for something better.
Even California realized that the cost of single payer health care would bankrupt the state.
Mark
I heard they were going to but could only get Maher and Colbert ....
Looking forward to Fedex Care.
Yes idiot, let's go with single payer health-care with appointments scheduled one year in advance and cancellations due to death long before any hope of treatment, you vile filthy lying Marxist doctor. You are cordially invited to consume excrement and expire!
When she died, her congregation marched seven miles, holding her photograph and lugging coffins emblazoned with her name, to launch a sit-in in front of Northwestern University Hospital.
Coffins plural....?????
Did they use a chainsaw to split up her corpse, did the corpseman have to do that grizzly task?
This is sick. Setting up the sale of a heart or liver to pay for the widow's retirement is not moral or ethical. Why did I immediately think of, "Get thee behind me Satan?"
When government is the only payer, what makes nuts like Ansell believe his personal pricing power will remain under his own control? The fastest way for government to control health care spending is to stipulate lower than market rates for care. It already does this in Medicare and Medicaid.
The author is a freaking professor of medicine. Why didn’t he help his parents out and buy health insurance for them? Typical liberal.
You kind of summed it up right there. I will refine it.
SOCIALISM treats people like objects.
Now that is someone’s new great tagline.
I read somewhere, “if you like public housing, you’ll love government medicine.”
I think the general effect of single-payer (I do believe it will be the next ‘gimmick’) is that a year into it, you start to see hospitals downsize the list of things that they provide. Maybe in highly urbanized areas...the full-menu will continue to exist. But in most of the nation, the financial incentive isn’t there...so you curtail some things...making the guy drive an extra two hours for some highly specialized procedure.
After three years, people will ask why their regional hospitals all downsized their staffs and capabilities, and the simple answer will be that if you want affordability in your care...you have to accept marginalized healthcare in the end. At that point, other than pulling real cash out of your pocket to pay doctors under the table...the game is over.
so sad, and maddening...
What?
They didn't take up a collection to pay it themselves?
What is sick is are the hospital ceo’s and the pharmaceutical companies getting rich off of transplantations of organs which were donated “for free”...so whose “Satan” is supposed to “get behind thee”?
If I decide to donate my organs knowing that some hospital and surgeons will profit handsomely off of my “free gift”, knowing that some hospitals will deny transplants due to the patients’ being unable to pay...then I want my surviving family to have a share in the profits as a legacy to them! You missed the other part...that I think transplantations should all be banned until a massive rethink is done as to why and how to do them in a way that is ethical and fair to all!
The major hospital systems for years have monetized the golden rule, knowing how to guilt folks into voluntary actions that the hospital systems then profit by.
Since you are a scripture quoter...then “eat” this one...Luke 16:”8The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the sons of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the sons of light. 9I tell you, use worldly wealth to make friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings.…”
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