My granddaughter has gastroenteritis, not swine flu. However, the swine flu almost killed her anyway, by overloading the hospital system.
Details follow.
My son & daughter-in-law have insurance (Blue Cross). They live near a good-sized city (Lancaster, Ca). Despite these advantages, my granddaughter almost didn't make it.
They made 4 trips to emergency rooms with a not-quite-one year old suffering from diarrhea at the 40 diapers a night level. They were never seen, after waiting 4+ hours at a shot. The emergency rooms are overwhelmed with non-English speakers seeking treatment for flu symptoms (Lancaster is in the Antelope Valley, which is filled with the sort of people who rail against open borders but hire undocumented workers for their businesses). They have seen this emergency room under different circumstances and it was not even close to being this busy.
They did get her in to an urgent care clinic, which basically said "Gastroenteritis. Pedialyte." and sent them home.
This morning my son noticed that my granddaughter was looking very badly. After trying another hospital, which didn't even take their insurance, and still not getting in, he resorted to returning home and dialing 911.
The paramedics took one look and put my granddaughter on an IV and took her to the hospital. Arriving via ambulance bypassed the triage desk and got her into a room. The doctors did their tests and discovered she had lost almost 2 pounds (out of ~18 - so, that compares to a 180 pound man losing 15 or 20 pounds in a couple of days), and her blood sugar was below 60 (starving). She is being admitted to the hospital. Had it taken a few more hours to get her seen, she might have died. She is still not out of the woods.
The system, quite obviously, is broken. People with insurance can't get treatment.
A for-profit system means reducing excess capacity in the name of efficiency. Of course, excess capacity is exactly what you want the system to have when a crisis hits.
Open borders mean lots of people outside the usual systems of care. When a crisis hits, these people are dumped right into the emergency room, exacerbating the crisis.
And, finally, my son has lots of experience with hospitals (works as a CNA), and he thinks this particular hospital is just horribly bad.
Anyway, I needed to vent. A couple of issues that have just been ignored for decades (health care and immigration) nearly combined to kill my beautiful little granddaughter.
UPDATE
I spoke to my son last night. Granddaughter is doing better now that she's on an IV. Sitting up, looking around, much more alert.
And best of all, dancing. My son provided some rhythm for her by tapping on the bed rails, and granddaughter got her grove on. Groving is a primary metric of how she's feeling; when she's tired, or sick, she doesn't dance. When she's happy, she boogies to music.
Grandpa feels much better.