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This claim is often made by those who oppose Obama's efforts to reform the medical system.
I worked in health care [tech support and services] for seven years, and my wife has been an X-Ray and CT tech for over thirty years. She has worked everywhere from world-class hospitals, to one-horse hospitals in a town with two street lights. While I don't know what health care is like in other countries, to those who think the system here cannot be signifantly [dramatically] improved, I say you are seriously misguided. From my point of view, the claim is ludicrous! I cannot even begin to tell you how many times my wife [Tsu] has come home either steaming from the ears, or nearly in tears. One example that comes to mind was the time a major hospital at which she worked didn't even have the proper respirators for babies, but they did buy a grand piano and hire a pianist to play in the lobby. What has happened over the last two+ decades is that health care has become more about business than health.
Probably one of the most ridiculous experiences was when my mother was in the hosptial. After a botched surgery that left her crippled, I went down to help out. I then posted this rant in the mentors forum.
That was only one week. It went on for years and was a freaking nightmare. IIRC, she was taking something like 80mg of morphine a day for about two years!
Here is one study that ranks the US as 37th in the world, in health care.
http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf
From my point of view, waving the flag at the expense of people who are suffering terribly, is right up there with 911 and moon hoax conspiracy theories. Honestly, when I hear someone talking about how wonderful our health care system is, I want to hurt someone!
I worked in health care [tech support and services] for seven years, and my wife has been an X-Ray and CT tech for over thirty years. She has worked everywhere from world-class hospitals, to one-horse hospitals in a town with two street lights. While I don't know what health care is like in other countries, to those who think the system here cannot be signifantly [dramatically] improved, I say you are seriously misguided. From my point of view, the claim is ludicrous! I cannot even begin to tell you how many times my wife [Tsu] has come home either steaming from the ears, or nearly in tears. One example that comes to mind was the time a major hospital at which she worked didn't even have the proper respirators for babies, but they did buy a grand piano and hire a pianist to play in the lobby. What has happened over the last two+ decades is that health care has become more about business than health.
Probably one of the most ridiculous experiences was when my mother was in the hosptial. After a botched surgery that left her crippled, I went down to help out. I then posted this rant in the mentors forum.
Boy, this just keeps getting better.
Mom had the implant done thursday morning, so I drove down last night anticipating that I could be some help when she gets home [again]. Yesterday she was doing absolutely great and declared the spinal nerve stimulator a raging success. So I expected that today we would pick her up around noon, and I could spend the weekend making food for the week and so forth. Having arrived at 4AM, I was awoke by my dad who was nearly in a state of panic at 8AM. Mom called at 7, and during the night the battery in the power pack for the stimulator went dead! They installed a ten thousand dollar device and put in a dead battery. So she called the nurse who got another battery and put it in, but then the thing wouldn't work. So what I wake up to is this: The stimulator isn't working and we need to go fix it!
So I'm laying there trying to make sense of this: Okay, the implant was done yesterday, she's still in the hospital, and I have to fix it? WTF! He explained that the phone number for the technical support was sitting on her bedstand, and housekeeping threw it away so nobody knows who to call. As I'm still shaking my head in disbelief, I asked if we can't call the main number for the company, but of course, all that is heard is a message that they're closed for the weekend, and please enter the desired mailbox number to leave a message. Of course we have no idea who we even need.
We called the pain specialist's answering service, but the primary was off and the secondary gave explicit instruction that he was only to be contacted in the case of an emergency. But this is an emergency, she's in extreme pain we insisted. "I'm sorry, that's not an emergency", she replied. Okay so what is an emergency for a pain specialists? "I'm sorry, I have explicit instructions". So I made sure that we understood: You [a near min wage worker Iamb thinking] are refusing to contact the doctor. Yes she replied. "Well, I could if the nurse called me". So even though the pain specialists is on call mainly for when mom is home, we conceded to call the head nurse. The nurse thinks that she may know who to call by looking up the names in the registry for the day of the implant, since the technical specialist had to sign in. Meanwhile, I managed to fake my way into the mail system at the main number and started scrolling through what turned out to be at least a hundred different names; none of which began with what we knew was the first name of the support specialists - Don.
At about 11AM, while my dad and I are still scrambling for some way to resolve this situation, we get a call from mom saying that the surgeon who did the implant showed up with the support guy, the thing is now working, and "get me the hell out of here".
While at the hospital, the nurse gave mom some paperwork with emergency number needed for the tech support person. I then asked the nurse to write it down on one of my business cards and joked that when they lose the number again they can call me. Well, later and back at home, mom wasn't doing so well, so we wanted to talk with tech support to see if an adjustment can be made. We then discover that we had been given the same phone number that we had at 7AM. We never got the emergency number. By the time we discovered this, the nurse of interest was off duty and had left.
The pain specialist was scheduled to call and check in this evening so we figured that he could help, or at least have the information needed. He never called.
That was only one week. It went on for years and was a freaking nightmare. IIRC, she was taking something like 80mg of morphine a day for about two years!
Here is one study that ranks the US as 37th in the world, in health care.
http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf
From my point of view, waving the flag at the expense of people who are suffering terribly, is right up there with 911 and moon hoax conspiracy theories. Honestly, when I hear someone talking about how wonderful our health care system is, I want to hurt someone!
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