Res Ipsa Loquitur

"We just followed the rules."

Bastards. Sounds almost like a perfect parody of a socialist system...except that it isn't.

Yeah, Americans never have trouble getting emergency care. Protect us from a government that makes everyone get health care!

It's funny how people die without health insurance (or get denied coverage when they DO have insurance) every day in America, but that's just good ol' capitalism ... but when one person has to wait in line in Canada it's PROOF that we're right to be killing millions slowly here in the states by starving them of proper health care.

I grew up in Canada. My little sister was airlifted to the best children's hospital in the county for free when a stomachache turned out to be an acute intestinal problem.

Here in the states, another of my sisters lost her baby at one month old because her doctor, to save money, sent her home for 24 hours to see what would happen to the kid before treating it. Well, the baby died, that's what happened. But he saved money -- until a three-year lawsuit got settled in my sisters favor.

Yay free market health care!

Aaron, here's the difference that you seem unable to see between the case of the man in Canada and your sister's child...

Man in Canada;
A receptionist made a serious mistake, resulting in a man's death, and was not found to be at fault. She was just following the rules.

Your sister's case;
A DOCTOR made a mistake, resulting in a child's death, and was found to be responsible and was held accountable.

You also assume that your sister's doctor made his poor decision based on cost. I almost died because a doctor sent me home with a sore throat that closed my windpipe a few hours later. His decision was not based on cost (I pay a lot for good insurance) but on the fact that my condition was so rare that he never considered that I was in danger.

Your understanding of logic is as faulty as your understanding of ethics.

I'm waiting for you to graduate from law school and (maybe) pass the bar... your first disciplinary hearing will be interesting reading.

I gave examples of 1) good canadian health care (since Rita was excited about an example of BAD canadian health care) and 2) an example of BAD American health care (since she's happy with our system.

By the way, if you're happy with what happened with my sister you're pretty sick. Yes it was based on cost -- she was uninsured and they couldn't wait to get her out of the office. This type of cost-benefit analysis (if we turn away 1000 mothers, only one will lose her baby and sue, and the bottom line will be better) is typical anti-socialist willingness to sacrifice babies for bucks, though. So be proud -- you've saved dying babies from socialism! Good job.

Anyway, I was mostly having a knee-jerk reaction against Rita's knee-jerk reaction to any hint of socialism. Rita said "yeah, let's nationalize health care like Canada did." But she her reason -- that sometimes a receptionist makes decisions, and occasionally receptionists make mistakes -- is no more supported than mine. Where was HER logic? If she gives an example and basis her conclusion on that one example, why can't I use the same rhetoric to demonstrate that one could argue either way on these facts?

I took a girfriend of mine to the emegency room in the middle of the night with a serious athsma attack. Ever tried to fill out forms and answer questions about insurance with someone who's strangling? That's what you have to do in an emergency room in America to get to a doctor; and who was deciding if we qualified to see a doctor? A receptionist. Hmm ...

I've spent quite a bit of time with both systems, and in America I've mostly just wished I was getting health care in Canada. Granted, there are plenty of reasons it's good to be in American (which is why I'm here) but health care for the working class isn't one of them.

Nice work Aaron... you managed to infer something that was neither said nor implied. I take no joy in the death of any child. Nor, as a matter of fact, do I get any pleasure out of any person's death.

Your suggestion to the contrary is a despicable example of your lack of any sense of honor or decency. You raise the issue of your sister's child's death as an example of the effect of capitalist medicine to refute a point about the short-comings of socialist medicine. When I point to a flaw in your analogy, you falsely accuse me of the worst sort of inhuman meaness.

I now am wondering if you even have a sister or if you just created one as a device to support your argument.

You are a dishonest man, a person who does not let facts or reason interrupt your fantasies of that socialist heaven north of the border.

Yes, Canada, where all the doctors are perfect saints and no one is in it just for the geld.

But wait... you came from Canada to the good old USA... are you just here for the money?

btw...

I don't know what kind of crappy hospital you took your girlfriend to, but here in the country, way up in the backward hills of the Ozark Mountains, we have a trained nurse who does the medical interview... it's the law.

Triage must be done by a nurse and you cannot be turned away without a doctor signing off on it. Oh, and any medical facility that turns any one away for not having insurance is penalized by getting cut off from medicare and medicaid. Again, it's the law.

I've seen folks come into the Emergency room in really bad shape, car crash or such, and no one even asks about insurance until the next day. Trauma is trauma and the people I've known who work there do it because that is what they have dedicated their lives to, saving lives.

I suspect your girlfriend didn't have her insurance card.

But, they asked you about her insurance, didn't they?

They didn't just tell her to go home and get her card "...because that's the rule" did they?

I think they performed a damn sight better than the that receptionist in Canada.

Forrest... trees... it's all right there in front of you...

"None is so blind as he who will not see."

Mike, the obvious point is that one receptionist screwing up once does not a failed system make. Rita was so eager to discount the entire Canadian medical system based on an isolated incident; I simply brought up some isolated incidents of my own regarding the American system. I'm not advocating a "socialist heaven" -- rather, I'm saying that I've experienced what capitalist hell can be.

I also have no idea where you get off questioning my honesty. Here's a picture of my sister with one of her two still-living children:
http://viablesoftware.com/casey/album/098.jpg

When her baby died, she couldn't let go of him. She gave him a bath, and held him for hours, after he died. As for the hospital I took my girlfriend to, it was in Denver -- I don't remember the name. These events, and the various others I talk about, are very personally important to me; I don't make them up for purposes of argument. Rather, I argue that American health care sucks BECAUSE of these experiences. Do you think I just picked my position arbitrarily, for the fun of it?

But back to the primary point -- many Americans dismiss universal health care out-of-hand as Rita did. But American health care system is TERRIBLE for the uninsured. It's awful.

So yeah, there may be some problems occasionaly in Canada, but at least people are insured! More than 40 MILLION people (including millions of children) in the U.S. have NO HEALTH INSURANCE. None. But you and Rita would rather have that than, heaven forbid, "socialism." Why? Are you mean-spirited? Have you been brainwashed? I dunno. But I know that every day, tens of millions of Americans suffer without health care because of the attitudes of voters like you.

Sorry, I've too busy sittin' out on the front porch in my overalls drinkin' corn liquor & watchin' my hound dawgs scratch fleas to discuss the finer points of socialism with you. But why bother? Obviously my summa cum laude B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Honors Interdisciplinary Studies (read old school Ivy League level liberal arts education) doesn't qualify me to have sound, reasoned objections to a system that's worked so well in other countries.

I can see now that my example of what happens when bureaucrats have control of access to medical services was totally off-base. Whatever was I thinking? Kafka perhaps? He writes real good, but I had to get teacher to help me with some o' them big ol' words he used. I mean really. He could'a just called that one story "The Day I Turned Into a Bug".

Where was I? Oh yeah, thanks for explaining and all that.

Now where did I put my little brown jug?

Actually, a nurse performs triage, you just have to have your card and get past the receptionist to get to the triage, unless you go straight to the emergency room.

I'm still puzzled as to why it seems impossible to look up the person's card number without having the card in one's hands, though.

That's the big difference that I see between here & there. If you're trying to see a doctor for anything but a routine appointment, the receptionist will switch you over to talk to a nurse. At least that's what they do at all my doctors' offices. They're afraid of being sued is why.

Even at the hospital here, which is very aggressive about collecting accounts due, you are seen by a nurse first...then they get your insurance & other info. If you're too sick, they get it from whomever brought you if possible. And they aren't allowed to turn you away if you don't have insurance.

I don't know why they would insist on physically seeing the insurance card unless it's an anti-fraud measure? This story sounds more like encounters I've had at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The proper papers are sacrosanct there.

Petty bureaucrats are the same the world over, I suspect.

"Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)"

Notes from the Underground
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
1864

That is one of my favorite paragraphs... and it shows that petty officials have not changed in 140 years. I suspect that the pharo's officials were the same.