Do you have medical insurance?
I read a piece on how a homeless man, a paraplegic no less, was released from the hospital and dumped on skid row in downtown Los Angeles. He was crawling on the street in his hospital gown - no wheel chair or walker. It happens more often than people realize. The hospital discharges a non-pay patient, ready or not, and they better have someplace to go.
Hospital utilization review boards have to allocate beds to patients - and when they are insured, their stay at hospital better not be too long. A woman who works for me is going in to have fibroid tumors removed - it’s kind of major surgery - and she will be released the same day. It’s an insurance company thing - don’t use up their dollars. (Of course the insurance companies are trying to save the insuring employer money - as well as increasing profits for their shareholders.)
Non-pay patients take away from pay patients, which suggests to me, the hospitals and medical profession are beholden to the insurance company, and it is all pretty much for profit. Market economy rules the world.
Alleged Homeless Dumping
Witnesses claim to have seen a hospital van drop off a homeless paraplegic man here on Skid Row, leaving him crawling in the street with nothing more than a soiled gown and a broken colostomy bag. Police traced the van to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.
Police said the man, who was dragging a broken colostomy bag behind him, was dumped on the sidewalk Thursday in one of the worst parts of the city by the driver of a hospital van. The area is the same location where city officials say hospitals have dumped the homeless before.Witnesses, all homeless people, began shouting, “Where is his wheelchair? Where is his walker?” Detective Russ Long said Friday. They told officers the driver responded that the man defecated in the van and had to be removed. - AOL News
The van driver was seen refreshing her make-up before she left the scene. In L.A. you always have to look your best. What the hell is going on in our world?
We need more saints, like St. Francis, to take care of our poor, and we have to do what we can as well - we have to do something. It’s a scandal.
February 10th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
My own mother died when I was 8 due to a lack of quality medical care. Her real diagnosed illness: no insurance. What will the solution be? How does EVERY other industrialized nation handle health care?
February 10th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I honestly don’t know what the solution is. M. Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, Rose Hawthorne’s Dominicans do what they can - yet we must pray for more vocations and for the saints to once again go out into the streets and collect the poor and suffering. Charity has grown cold in the world.
February 10th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
That’s despicable when hospitals are all about money. Caring for the sick and injured should take priority over who can pay.
In Canada, where I live, this would never happen (I hope), because the government would just suck up the bill for those who can’t pay. When I transport a patient with no insurance to the hospital, they are given the same level of care as someone with full medical coverage. The hospital always eats the bill for the uninsured when they have no mailing address to send the bill to.
February 11th, 2007 at 1:19 am
New York’s wonderful Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor (founded by Mary Walsh, I believe) were splendid in their compassionate service of the sick poor. They no longer exist as such. The Camillians, Servants of the Sick, and the Brothers of Saint John of Gof (Fatebene Fratelli) remain devoted to the sick poor. Some years ago I was without medical insurance for a brief time and needed surgery: the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth cared for me gratis in their hospital in New Haven, Ct. As a rule, Catholic hospitals where there are still religious in charge are attentive to the sick poor and show compassion. . . the problem is that many Catholic hospitals are no longer directly administered by religious.
February 11th, 2007 at 10:20 am
“It all started one summer day in 1869 when Mary Walsh, a poor Irish immigrant girl, came to the United States and settled in the east side of New York City. She secured employment as a laundress with a wealthy family for whom she had worked.
On her way to work one August day a child’s cry of distress caught her attention. She saw the child — about seven years old — sobbing. Gently, she tried to comfort the frightened little girl. She told Mary Walsh her mother was upstairs ill and she did not know what to do.She went upstairs with her to find the child’s mother lying gravely ill, a dead infant by her side. Her prayer was, “Dear Lord, aid me. Tell me how to help.”During the next few days Mother Mary Walsh sacrificed her much-needed job and devoted all of her time to helping this “helpless” family. From then on, having seen the desperate plight of the poor with her own eyes and felt it with her own heart, she dedicated herself to a lifetime of charity and mercy.
This incident was to influence her whole life. Though not conscious of it at that time, she was laying the foundation of her real vocation as a benefactress and friend of Christ’s sick poor, no matter what age, race, creed or color. This is how her community, The Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor, began.”
From a Denver Website of the Dominican Home Health Care Agency
February 11th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
To those who lament the state of healthcare in the USA and look to other nations, why not ask some of them their opinions about their socialized health care systems? I think the fact that many many Canadians flee to the USA to get surgery, and that doctors are fleeing Canada for the USA in droves, are both very telling. Remember, socialism breed mediocrity.
February 12th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Last summer I had to be taken in an ambulance to the hospital twice. Once for the injury and once for my reaction to the pain medication the hospital gave. Total cost for the rides? $3600. Interest rate since I didn’t have cash and can’t afford anything less than a $5000 deductible? 18%!!! There is very little altruistic about the medical industry.
February 15th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
The problem is: how can we get 20 million dollars’ worth of treatment to people “altruistically.”
Most folks are altruistic about 20 dollar-amounts, but break 1 million and it’s economic motives all the way up.