Sunday, May 18, 2008

SERT Follow up

If I could sue someone's ass for this I would. My wife has a minor pneumothorax, which the radiologist discovered when reading her X-ray after her doctor had examined the digital facsimile sent to her the day it was taken.

At least he was courteous enough to call us just now on a Sunday evening so we could get right down there and get in the queue for a massive hospital bill. It still shouldn't be as bad as the ICU bill another rider got after a more spectacular crash two years ago, but it's hardly a good advertisement for the SERT.

Ironically, I'm scheduled to go to my doctor tomorrow to get something checked out that could be rather bad as well. Remember, kids, if you don't get health insurance through your employer and can't afford it yourself, you are a drain on society and deserve whatever you get. If your luck runs out, you're f***ed and rightly so.

Hell, you could fall in the bathtub and get racked up this badly. But it's still true about health care in this country. Get rich or die trying. It is more desperately important than you might have thought.

Ethically I would rather have to deplete my savings to pay for actual care I'm receiving than to support some parasitic insurance company. The system has to change, and we have to force the change.

4 comments:

skvidal said...

+1

I very much agree. It's time when we stop thinking of general health as something only some of the population has a right to.

Lazy Bike Commuter said...

You know, I'm out $42k in hospital bills right now for an emergency appendectomy--I was right between the time when my old health insurance expired and my new health insurance began.

You know what though? Even though I was charged more than twice what I made last year, I still think universal health care is a bad idea.

I would rather have them require that everyone has to pay the same thing for the same service.

Anonymous said...

Lazy Bike commuter,

you are obviously a man willing to stand up for his convictions. I am sure you will proudly pay back every sent of your 42K debt so as not to burden us with your misfortune.

Good for you , and God Bless America

cafiend said...

Universal health care as a code word for a cumbersome, government-administered bureaucratic monster is a bad idea, but the words universal, health and care are good concepts. It simply means that everyone gets care. What's not to like?

A comment field is way too small a space in which to discuss all the important details of how it will be structured. But let's not use code words and discard an idea on the basis of them.