Jake had health insurance. He got some from his employer, and he got the rest because he fought in Vietnam.
Jake died at 48, back in the 1990's. He died because millions of Americans do not have health insurance. Let me explain.
Jake had health insurance. He got some from his employer, and he got the rest because he fought in Vietnam.
Jake died at 48, back in the 1990's. He died because millions of Americans do not have health insurance. Let me explain.
Jake was my friend’s brother. His name was not Jake, so I'm calling him Jake. He was a hard-working family man raising kids and the whole deal.
He felt great. He was 48 and he had health insurance. If you have health insurance you just plain feel better than the bums who don't.
Anyway, Jake’s driving home one afternoon after work and he gets a twinge in his chest, and then the twinge turns straight into hell, and he knows two things: one, he's having a big heart attack and two, there's a hospital just a mile or so from where he's driving. Maybe he can get there in time.
No worry. He's got insurance out the ying-yang.
Jake makes it to the hospital, to the emergency room. That's the emergency room that Mitt Romney says you can go to even if you're not insured.
Jake manages to get out of his car. With more pain than he's ever felt in his life exploding in his chest, he walks a few steps. He gets to the sidewalk outside the emergency room. He can no longer walk, but he knows he's okay because not only does he have insurance out the ying-yang, but as he drops to the ground he sees hospital personnel on the other side of the glass doors, and he sees that they see him. They will come for him.
Inside the glass doors of the emergency room one hospital employee yells out that there's a guy lying out on the sidewalk just outside the door. Three other hospital employees rush over to him and quietly tell him –
- this is the important part –
they quietly tell their colleague that he is new and he doesn't know that the hospital policy is that you have to be able to make it all the way into the emergency room on your own, or with help from family or friends or emergency responders. We are NOT to go outside and help people who can't make it inside on their own.
The newbie asks why the hospital has this policy. He is told that they are obligated to help anyone who makes it into the emergency room, even if they don't have insurance. People who don't have insurance cost the hospital millions of dollars every year when they make it into the emergency room.
But they are under no obligation to do squat-all for people who can't make it into the emergency room, it's just not their problem, so if they aren't insured those bums won't cost the hospital a red cent.
Do you understand now why having health insurance – like Jake did – hurts EVERYBODY?
Jake died on the sidewalk a few minutes later. His family won a settlement from the hospital corporation, but their accountants have certainly done a cost/benefit analysis and decided that it STILL makes good financial sense to ignore people dying a few feet from the emergency room entrance.
There are laws about this, you say? Where corporations are concerned, there are cost/benefit analyses for everything, even laws. Some people even think corporations are people.
This really happens. It happened to Jake, Jake’s story is real.
If you're voting for Mitt Romney, thinking ‘I've got mine’, then maybe someday you'll get yours.
If you're not voting for Mitt Romney you might want to forward this to people who are.