Republished to New Diarists and note added here with delilah 52's permission.
Please note: Be very careful not to click on Publish Now for someone else's diary in the New Diarists' queue. Glen the Plumber and I [nomandates], along with Lorikeet (who is not a member of New Diarists), were around to keep an eye on this draft diary when it was published by mistake, but we could not unpublish or recall it.
New Diarists: After you publish to the New Diarists' queue, our advice is to delete ALL tags. The site will not let anyone publish a diary without tags, so that will protect from this kind of accident.
What follows is delilah 52's draft diary that was published by mistake and spent all night on the recent list because she had no idea this had happened and was not around to delete it.
(MKSinSA: I made some minor edits in the first part and will continue the rest a bit later. Left the original as much as possible so you could see my thinking. Nice so far.)
A few years ago my father had an abdominal aortic aneurysm that burst while he was in the emergency room. He spent two agonizing months in Intensive Care and another month in rehabilitation. He is now running around as if nothing had ever happened. Fit as a fiddle, the crazy little man.
His medical bills topped $500,000.00 but he had Medicare, thank goodness. But, what if he didn't? My parents are both retired and live comfortably, but $500,000.00 in medical bills would have destroyed them and would most likely be passed a financial burden passed on to their children. The cost of medical care is so astronomical that a single major event can prove so devastate ing financially devastate that many people can never recover.
I happen to work as a nurse in the emergency room where my dad's Triple-A burst. We are It's a little hospital but our surgeons, physicians and nurses saved my dad's life. Which brings me to the reason I chose to write this diary. I have a few things to say about healthcare in America.
During the healthcare debates, we heard politicians touting the greatness of American Healthcare. "We have the best healthcare in the world!" While I doubt our unique and total superiority (and wonder why we must always be THE GREATEST) over all other countries, I do agree that we have some pretty darned skilled medical professionals and some pretty darned good medical facilities. Even in little hospitals such as the one in my small community.
However, our system of healthcare is completely insane. I will go so far as to say that it is driven solely for the purpose of making a profit. Doctors and nurses, in general, really do care about our patients' health and well-being, but we're forced to work in an environment that does not have our citizens' best interests at heart. The system, as it currently stands, fails to promote personal responsibility and perpetuates class warfare by demonizing the poor. Our pharmaceutical companies are creating turning our population into prescription drug addicts and hypochondriacs out of our population and our lawyers are getting rich suing the pharmaceutical companies. Mental health facilities have been decimated -- considered a frivolous and unnecessary state expense. There is rampant waste, abuse and fraud and the costs of these are staggering. Our system is unfair, unjust and unsustainable.
I am not an expert. I'm just a nurse, but I do work in the field. It is what I see on a daily basis that leads me to make these statements. You don't have to be an expert, or even work in the field, to know what's wrong here. Turn on your television for an afternoon and count the ads there are for the many wide range of ailments and attendant medications that "cure" them. (and why you probably have any number of problems for which you need to be medicated). Now, count the lawyers trolling for clients willing to sue pharmaceutical companies for medications that cause physical harm or death. First, companies profit by making us believe we are sick then lawyers profit by making us think it's all someone else's fault.
At work each night I see countless patients who come to the emergency room with non-emergencies. Some come because they have Medicaid and no doctors will take them, leaving the emergency room as their only option. Some come for frivolous reasons because they have Medicaid and they can, resulting in comments like "I'm working two jobs so this bozo can come here by ambulance with a rash and I'm paying for it." Some come 26 times a month. Some come three times a day. But most come because it is their ONLY option.
There is definitely abuse of the system, and there are less expensive places to obtain non-emergent medical care than the emergency room. But it is our healthcare system that is to blame. Forcing or encouraging people to use the emergency room as a first resort perpetuates negative stereotypes of the poor while, at the same time, promoting a lack of personal responsibility among these same people. This does nothing but validate the Republican agenda that equates being poor with being a societal sponge This encourages the widely-held belief of the 'haves' that the 'have nots' are a drain on our society and not worthy of while ignoring even their most basic of needs. Reforming our system and providing affordable access to even theour poorest of citizens would lead to people seeking more appropriate facilities for non-emergent healthcare needs and would lower healthcare costs for everyone.
America probably does have some of the best medical care in the world. I don't really know. But it is unevenly and inefficiently distributed. It is NOT available to everyone, and the very system itself promotes abuse at great cost to society as a whole. Sure, there will always be those who will abuse any system, just as there will always be those who commit tax will defraud it, or crimes of various natures. But a massive overhaul of the system can minimize these abuses, and provide more and better care for everyone.
My dad received excellent care and is alive today because of it. I am grateful for that. But the care he received is not available to everyone and that is shameful. I firmly believe that we need to continue to push for fairness in healthcare -- be it single-payer or Medicare for all. It should be a right not a privilege. And, it should not be driven by profit. Healthcare should be just that, HEALTH CARE. It should not be the means by which some people get rich at the expense of others' well-being.
I'd like to leave you with this: I once had a patient who had a pneumothorax (collapsed lung). He was a young father with minimal income and who didn't want to burden his family with the cost of his medical care. His condition was life-threatening and yet I had to convince him that, despite the immense cost, his family would be worse off without him. It made me sick. I to know that this poor man would be shackled with a $50,000 medical bill, for which he woul'd be paying the rest of his life.
No one should ever, ever have to make a decision like that.
(MKSinSA: Here are my completed markups. I hope you find them acceptable, if imperfect themselves. I wish you the best on publication. :o )
(GTP: I capitalized the title. Can't wait to rec. :7)
9:50 PM PT (nomandates): This draft diary seems to have been published by mistake out of the drafts queue for New Diarists. For those reading this, hope you enjoy the preview of what promises to be a good diary from delilah 52.