Have you seen this AP story? In it, the reporter uses the swine flu episode to highlight the shortcomings of Mexico’s health care system (which, as anyone who has been injured or fallen ill in Mexico can attest, does have its challenges). As I was reading through it, I thought…this stuff sure sounds familiar…
Mexicans will do almost anything to avoid a public hospital emergency room, where ailing patients may languish for hours slumped on cracked linoleum floors that smell of sweat, sickness and pine-scented disinfectant.
Let’s tweak that to reflect the experience of citizens of another large North American country:
Americans will do almost anything to avoid a public hospital emergency room, where ailing patients may languish for hours slumped on cracked linoleum floors that smell of sweat, sickness and pine-scented disinfectant.
Exactly my experience. When I was suffering from acute appendicitis, I went to the ER of a major urban medical center, where I waited for hours—in exactly the conditions described above. After four hours of excruciating pain, I gave up, called some friends, and (at midnight) asked them to drive me home. I knew what was wrong with me, but figured I’d rather die in my bed than huddled on a concrete bench outside the ER in the winter cold. In that entire time, I never saw a doctor or a triage nurse and encountered only some surly staff who gave me a dirty look when I threw up into the bucket I’d brought. I sat next to a young woman who was miscarrying a pregnancy; she also had been there over four hours with exactly zero medical attention. There was no place inside to sit, and the floors were too filthy to sit or lie down on.
Many don’t see doctors at all, heading instead to the clerk at the corner pharmacy for advice on coping with a cold or a flu.
Good luck trying to get in to see a doctor for something as minor as a cold or flu! American access to medical care pretty much forces you to head for the corner Walgreen’s or the local naturopath to ask for over-the-counter nostrums.
Some patients suspected of having swine flu told The Associated Press that public hospitals turned them away or forced them to wait for hours for treatment even after the government declared a national emergency.
Some people at the ER where I waited had been sitting in the waiting room for eight hours. I was told the typical wait was six hours. No tweaking needed here to make this apply to the US experience.
“If someone is sick, he can’t simply say, ‘I’m going to the doctor’ or ‘I’m going to the hospital,’ because it depends on whether he has Social Security…”
Uh huh:
“If [an American] is sick, he can’t simply say, ‘I’m going to the doctor’ or ‘I’m going to the hospital,’ because it depends on whether he has Medicare or health insurance…”
And…
While access to health care is a right enshrined in the Mexican constitution, millions of Mexicans have no health insurance at all.
Heee!
Access to health care is most certainly not regarded as a constitutional right, and millions of Americans have no health insurance at all.
And, annoyingly enough:
Mexico spends only 6.6 percent of its gross domestic product on health care — less than half the U.S. figure. No country in the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development puts a smaller share of public money into its health care system.
Think of that. We have a healthcare system that in many ways, for the average Joe and Jane on the street, functions on a par with that of the most underfunded system in the OECD. What’s wrong with this picture?