A step closer to understanding "healthcare" in America
I'm slowly getting it.
I have always qustioned how the poor and uninsured get access to healthcare in the current farce of a country you/we live in. That joke being that the richest country in the world does not have universal access to health care, so the poor suffer just because you don't want to pay a dime in extra taxes.
But today I finally understand how the poor and sick survive here. I had the privilege of taking my wife to an Emergency Room at the local hospital. I was quite scared. I was expecting it to be like in England. A real emergency room full of people with broken arms and cuts. But no. It looked like a doctor's waiting room, full of people who were clearly not in any state of emergency. They were, however, clearly all poor, all from minority backgrounds and few of them (if any) had jobs. And there, clearly on the wall, was a poster that read that it was the hospital's legal obligation to examine, stabilize and then move to another facility (if needed) any patient that could not afford to pay or did not have insurance.
So this is how the system works here. ERs full of people not facing emergencies, just sick but unable to pay for treatment. They sit there and wait for hours, not to be treated but just to have their conditions stabilized. This country's health system is a joke. And Obama was right to fix it.
I'm slowly getting it.
I have always qustioned how the poor and uninsured get access to healthcare in the current farce of a country you/we live in. That joke being that the richest country in the world does not have universal access to health care, so the poor suffer just because you don't want to pay a dime in extra taxes.
But today I finally understand how the poor and sick survive here. I had the privilege of taking my wife to an Emergency Room at the local hospital. I was quite scared. I was expecting it to be like in England. A real emergency room full of people with broken arms and cuts. But no. It looked like a doctor's waiting room, full of people who were clearly not in any state of emergency. They were, however, clearly all poor, all from minority backgrounds and few of them (if any) had jobs. And there, clearly on the wall, was a poster that read that it was the hospital's legal obligation to examine, stabilize and then move to another facility (if needed) any patient that could not afford to pay or did not have insurance.
So this is how the system works here. ERs full of people not facing emergencies, just sick but unable to pay for treatment. They sit there and wait for hours, not to be treated but just to have their conditions stabilized. This country's health system is a joke. And Obama was right to fix it.
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