The Healthcare Hellhole

The other night I received a call from a longtime friend, someone that I used to work with and have stayed in touch.  She had a healthcare story that just boggles the mind.  My friend has stayed in pretty good shape over the years, eating healthy and exercising.  On one particular evening at her home, she began to experience chest pain on the left side.  As we all know, this is a potential sign of heart trouble and should never be ignored.  My friend did not ignore it and had her husband take her to their local hospital’s emergency room.

Now, it is pretty standard in U.S. emergency rooms that heart trouble or strokes are given priority and first admittance.  This was the case with my friend who was admitted immediately into a patient care room.  The usual tests were performed immediately in an effort to determine if indeed my friend was suffering some form of heart trouble.  Her vital signs did not indicate that there was a serious problem but there can always be other symptoms or signs of a problem not easily detected.  After the tests were performed it was nearly two hours before a physician came in to discuss the results.  The tests did not indicate any form of cardiac distress or potential stroke issues, however, the physician wanted more tests to rule out any other possibilities.

So, after a few more hours of waiting, my friend was finally taken in for more tests.  Then more time passed and finally the clueless physicians determined that she should be transferred to a larger hospital some 60 miles away, as their medical center was not adequately equipped to diagnose the issue.  The larger hospital had a complete cardiac wing that would be better equipped to diagnose the unknown issue.  Starting to get the picture here?  Do the words circle jerk start to enter your mind?   So, my beleaguered friend was transferred by ambulance to the larger hospital.

So additional tests were run, and more time passed, my friends’ husband began to lose his patience with this process (as would I), and started to ask questions, which all were answered with “we are doing the best we can”.  After 11 hours that my friend and her husband will never get back, a doctor came into the room and began to press on her ribs which resulted in agonizing sharp pain.  Mystery solved!  So, after all this time the actual problem ended up being a physical rib and muscle issue.  Now, I am no rocket-surgeon here, but shouldn’t you probably try to rule that out in the very beginning?

Seems to me like that would only take a few seconds to determine that maybe the problem is muscular and not cardiac.  Sure, you can run a few of the other standard tests to confirm your diagnosis but jeezo wouldn’t you start with basics.  If my car won’t start in the morning, I don’t send it in to have the engine overhauled, I start with the battery for criminy sakes.  If your lawn mower isn’t cutting the grass as well as it used to then junk it instead of sharpening the blade (sorry, it was the best that I could come up with).

So, 11 hours and an estimated cost of over $6,000 (ambo rides are not cheap) just to determine that a muscle was pulled, or a rib was out of place seems ludicrous to me.  Here is my point with all of this, we are constantly being told by pundits and politicians alike that we have the best healthcare in the world.  Yet, these kinds of stories just keep popping up everywhere all across our “fruited plains”.  The staggering cost of our healthcare coupled with the overload of doctors who have to increasingly order more expensive tests instead of using common sense does not leave one with the feeling of “the best”.

So, if we are supposed to buy into this concept of “free market”, capitalist-run healthcare being the best, and we have to pay more for it, then this makes us customers of this care system and entitled to be dissatisfied with its service. Right-wing pundits and politicians need to understand that healthcare from a customer standpoint is getting a failing grade.  Now, being millionaires and billionaires, I am sure that they get the finest quality healthcare anywhere in the world.  However, for the rest of us, it is the processed food version of care that usually leaves you sicker than before it is consumed!  Please explain to me again—how and why the capitalist healthcare system is better than single-payer or Medicare-for-All?

Talk to Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2019 All Rights Reserved