Backwards, barbaric, ignorant hicks.

[theweaselking]

Florida woman shot in face by .45 caliber bullet while watching New Year's celebrations.

Of course, this being the USA, we have: "An investigation determined that the bullet came from someone who fired into the sky to ring in the New Year."

"The bullet destroyed Ruby Cintron's eye and became lodged in her skull behind an eye socket. Doctors said removing the bullet means removing her eye, which is already destroyed. Cintron, who does not have health insurance, was forced to leave the hospital Tuesday because she cannot afford further care for her injuries,"

"Since Cintron is not a U.S. citizen, she does not qualify for aid"

And what are they doing about finding the person respondible?

"Police hope the person who fired the shot will turn themselves in to authorities."

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Removing the bullet means removing her (destroyed) eye; she's probably going to have to live with the bullet in her skull; does that mean they're just leaving them *both* in there? The bullet and whatever dead guck means she needs an artificial eye?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It means they're not taking the bullet out, and since she's poor and her life isn't in danger, they're not going to get her an artificial eye or do any more work on whatever is left. If she doesn't get gangrene, their job is finished.

These are *American* doctors. Giving adequate health care and helping people in need might impinge on their new cars and golf vacations.

Innacurate.

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

A foreign national in Canada would be subject to the same conditions, dude.

Re: Innacurate.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The Ministry of Health says otherwise (http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/program/ohip/ohipfaq_dt.html). Non-citizen residents are covered in Ontario.

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Of course, American's look upon middle-easterners who fire their AKs into the air at celebrations as mindless barbarians.

And the health care thing still blows my mind. Who the hell is callous or ignorant enough to think that people only deserve the medical care they can afford.

Mind you, they'd be able to afford medical care if it wasn't provided by private organisations, which are free to charge "what the market will bear". Considering how essential health care, the "market" will bear much, much more than it's technically worth.

Just the "invisible hand of the market" giving the finger to the poor.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I think I am in agreement with pretty much everything you said (I like the invisible hand analogy), except possibly the thing about the market bearing more than health care is worth. It's not that health care isn't worth that much; it's just that we're approaching it from the perspective that people should be able to get it anyway.

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

I can't tell from the pictures exactly what the bullet track was or where it lodged (because they're showing the wrong views) but I can tell you that, depending on where the bullet is and what it is made of, there are times you don't take them out. They can be relatively inert and poking around wherever they lodged may be a lot more risky than leaving them alone.

If it damaged her eyeball but it could be repaired to look relatively whole, even if she couldn't see, they would (should) have tried to do that first. If the eyeball was completely destroyed then they had to take it out. That said, there are degrees of "removing her eye" and that relates to future cosmetic options and needs.

I'm a little confused, though. If the bullet got anywhere near her brain, it had to have broken bone somewhere, which would suggest that more extensive repair than a ruptured globe was needed. If it didn't break bone, it should have been somewhere they could remove it. If "removing her eye" was sufficient treatment, then she didn't need to stay in the hospital more than a couple of days. They also don't generally let patients with a completely repaired or removed globe stay if there's nothing else wrong. They tell them to follow up with an outside ophthalmologist. No, all hospital systems don't make appointments for people before they leave and they definitely wouldn't have done so with an uninsured patient. And yes, that often means they don't get proper followup care. I want to know if they even gave her proper homecare instructions and medications.

Legally, once she was taken to the ER, they had to do whatever was necessary to save her life and provide any immediately required care. What the social workers usually do is try to get people into medicaid if they're totally uninsured. I don't know what happens with non-citizens, per se, and I also don't know the relative impact of state and federal law. Florida's a strange place. Lastly, if they had any decent social work at all at that hospital, they would have tried to contact community organizations that might assist her.

If you think any of this doesn't anger those of us in the health profession, think again, but insurance companies and commercial healthcare (like hospital corporations) outrank us. Which is to say, they have significantly more money to spend lobbying in Washington and elsewhere.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If you think any of this doesn't anger those of us in the health profession

I don't. I know a number of US doctors and other health professionals, and I am not, despite my snideness in one of the above comments, any more given to ascribe incompetence or maliciousness to them than I am to any other medical personnel, anywhere.

I am, however, a Canadian, and I am constantly reminded when dealing with US news that for some strange reason, free and comprehensive medical care, which I consider to be a simple requirement for human life in a civilised country, is not considered so south of the border.

It never fails to shock me, no matter how often I see it and no matter how firmly I know, intellectually, that most Americans can get emergency medical treatment or eat, not both. This is *barbaric*. This is the kind of thing that happens in subtropical African dictatorships in the middle of a civil war, not in nominally first-world countries, especially not in *phenomenally rich* first-world countries.[1]

It's one of the many reasons that being in an accident while in the USA terrifies me, and it's why I never travel down there without literally millions in insurance.

[1]: And it's not even that you're not spending the money on health care. You are - more, per capita, than any TWO other countries in the world combined. You're just getting much, much less for your money, since it's all being effectively embezzled by the corporations who run the insurance and the hospitals and restributed as "shareholder value".

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

This has been an ongoing debate for at least 50 years (unbelievable, I know). I'm not a historian, but to my knowledge, Truman proposed universal health care around 1948 and it's come up several times since. The arguments and the idiocy around this vary (it's tantamount to communism, it costs too much, you're going to have to reduce care to the least common denominator, etc.) but the outcome is the same - you better hope you're rich if you ever get really sick. No program is going to be perfect but trying to be all things to all people is another one of the mistakes that has come up in the past.

What's truly mindboggling (is that how you spell that?) is that in order for congress to continue to oppose or mess up any type of broad medical coverage, people have to keep voting for them. And a lot of the people voting for them are the people who need healthcare coverage. Go figure.

Randomness One: The insurance industry complains about their losses and liabilities and has managed to get all sorts of hidden little laws through congress that favor and protect them. According to Forbes, the CEO of Cigna's total compensation last year was $13.3 mil, Aetna's was $22.2 mil and United Health Group's was $124.8 mil. The industry spent over $100 mil in lobbying in 2004. Ask a nurse how much she gets paid. Ask me how sorry I feel for the insurance industry.

Randomness Two: Over half a billion dollars was spent during the last presidential campaign, around $68 million was spent by Bloomberg to win the New York City mayoral election and it's expected that each person running for senator will have to spend about $10 million in 2006 (so if 2 people ran for each of about 33 seats that's around $660 million?). I wonder how many people that would insure?

P.S. I've always been told when I travel to another country to take out a temporary insurance policy that will both cover any care I have to get there and the cost of getting me back to the U.S. And I've seen things that warn you that in a lot of countries they will not treat you without you proving you can pay them first. I'm not referring to so-called third world countries, either. So, while I don't know what the laws in the US are about it, I gather there are other countries that expect non-citizens to pay for their care. Which isn't necessarily entirely wrong, since you didn't pay the taxes that are paying for the care. But those are all countries with some kind of national care or socialized medicine or something, which we don't have.

Btw, I gather from what little I've been able to follow of the current and last election in Canada, that there are some debates about funding the health care there? I'd actually like to know more but I no longer live up north where I can get Canadian radio and TV so I just hear snipets.

Having grown up near the border and spent lots of time there, I am (shocking, I know) very aware that Canada is a different country (War of 1812 notwithstanding). I've never understood why even where I went to school learning about Canada wasn't considered important, even though people like to mention the longest open border in the world, or whatever. Fortunately, my grandfather was deeply interested in and educated about history, which was part of why we were in Canada so often. I also have fond memories of going to the CNE in Toronto every year. Am I dating myself? Not political, but it beat any state fair I ever went to.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

P.S. I've always been told when I travel to another country to take out a temporary insurance policy that will both cover any care I have to get there and the cost of getting me back to the U.S. And I've seen things that warn you that in a lot of countries they will not treat you without you proving you can pay them first. I'm not referring to so-called third world countries, either. So, while I don't know what the laws in the US are about it, I gather there are other countries that expect non-citizens to pay for their care. Which isn't necessarily entirely wrong, since you didn't pay the taxes that are paying for the care.

Pretty much - Canada's system is effectively single-payer insurance, by each province. It applies to citizens, permanent residents, people with work visa, and a certain subset of temporary visitors, but not tourists or illegal aliens - so no, Americans don't get free health care if they cross the border, and the real bitch of it is that your American insurance won't pay for injuries incurred outside of the USA unless you've paid through the nose for it.

This is a failing of the system, but a comparatively small one.

For this failing, I know that I can see a doctor if I get sick or injured, on short notice, without worrying about how I could pay for it and having to just hope I get better while I wait for my condition to get worse and much more expensive.

(and if everyone used a Canadian model of health care, then you'd get your emergency care in Canada, same as you'd get in the USA, and then your state health insurance would pay to transport you back to the state hospitals for the non-emergency treatment.)

I gather from what little I've been able to follow of the current and last election in Canada, that there are some debates about funding the health care there?

There isn't a lot of it, actually, this time around. Everyone wants more money for health care, but the big issue isn't money, it's availability of non-emergency treatment and wait times for specialised equipment. Scans of non-critical tissues, like knees, can have months of waiting time for the equipment and then surgery to fix the problem - as opposed to the USA, where it's done in a matter of days, but it doesn't matter because nobody but professional athletes can afford it.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Being outside the country is what travel insurance is for. Oh, sure, that also insures lost luggage against theft and crap like that, but the main and primary factor is health care and repatriation costs.

Here in the Netherlands we just (as in Jan 1) moved from 'everybody is insured and you just need to figure out by who or if it's the uninsured standby pot' to 'you're legally obligated to be insured but in the same way you're obligated to have car insurance'. Insurance now costs well over twice what it did last year, and next year's is expected to rise another 30%+. Numbers of the uninsured are expected to rise from a few percent to 30 percent, and the insurers are wailing that covering that from their money-set-aside-for-the-uninsured will eat into their profits too much or something like that.

The Grand Model for this scheme is the Swiss one, which after about 5 or 6 years of existence now has made health care there cost twice what it did before.


Fuck you very much, Balkenende.