This is one small hospital in Florida...Unbelievable! PLEASE WATCH THIS SHORT VIDEO. EVERYONE NEEDS TO HEAR THIS. IT AFFECTS EVERY ONE OF US!!! This is why you can't afford good health care. This should offend every US tax paying citizen. This is not only happening in Florida, but every state in the U.S.
Before I make any comments, you'll need to watch the video.
So you're probably outraged that this could happen, especially if you're one of the many tens of millions of Americans who do not have health care or who are in mountains of debt because of health care bills that you can not pay. Imagine returning to your country of origin and leaving all of those bills behind -- and not even having to pay for your return flight! I'm sure you're thinking that that would be a nice option to have.
But as matters such as these go, especially things that seem so incredibly outrageous, there are always other factors to consider.
Let me discuss just one. There are over four million U.S. citizens living permanently in other countries. This doesn't include students studying abroad, nor are Americans serving at U.S. military bases on foreign part of the mix. It does include people working for multinational companies, however. So if we assume that half of this group (two million people) are simply living on their own in foreign countries and not for some company that probably provides them with health care, we probably should also assume that a large number of the remaining number of people are uninsured. Anecdotal observation on my part while spending years living abroad would lead me to conclude that there are a lot of people who just wanted to blow out of the U.S. and live somewhere else because they didn't appreciate their lives here -- like many of the nearly 700,000 Americans currently living in Canada.
Here's the hitch. A significantly large segment of these uninsured, free-wheeling expats are living in countries where they have access to government health care (e.g., Canada, UK, Mexico, among probably a hundred other places). What do you think happens when one of them who is living on the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland is suddenly stricken with pneumonia? Do you think that the locals just let them die? Absolutely not. He or she goes to the hospital and the Irish doctors and nurses take care of the problem. And when it's time to pay? Sometimes the hospital is reimbursed and other times the staff simply says "You're welcome" as our fellow countryman or woman walks back into their Irish life.
Back in the 1980s I spent three days in a hospital in Mexico City having my appendix removed. It was a crazy story -- and I mean A CRAZY STORY -- and one that I never seem to get around to telling. It was in a hospital in a particularly gritty part of town and the doctors said that an appendectomy was a simple procedure for them compared to the gun shot and knife wounds they typically dealt with. My total bill? A pint of blood. They asked me to donate a pint of blood...adding to the end of the request, "if you wouldn't mind." That's it. Here's this gringo hanging out in Mexico who eats too many jalapenos and drinks too much tequila and ends up needing an emergency appendectomy -- and the people of Mexico have to pay for it. I'm sure some investigative journalist could have done a provocative expose about the hospital beds that were being occupied by "rich Americans" while poor Mexicans were being turned away.
I'm not saying that all things are equal and that U.S. citizens should be happy and willing to pay for the health care of people who are living as undocumented laborers in this country. What I am saying is that I'd like to see someone add up the total health care costs of Americans who are living abroad that are paid by foreign tax payers. If I had to guess, I'd surmise that the total cost for foreigners who lack insurance and are living legally or illegally here in this country would be more, but only because our health care costs are inflated. Many of the million dollar charges discussed in the video are largely unreasonable, even if they are true on paper. For example, my wife had shoulder surgery last summer and her insurance company was billed twenty bucks for a small bag of ice that they got out of an ice cooler. So I imagine that if the Guatemalan man receives a few packs of ice every day for a year, that amounts to $22,000 -- and I'm sure the hospital is keeping track of every single charge hoping that they'll one day be reimbursed by somebody...anybody.
I'm also not saying that this is something about which we ought not be concerned. And it's unreasonable to think that any hospital should absorb all of the charges for the care of someone who is not even a resident of the state in which that hospital or clinic is located. However, let's keep these matters in their proper context because when we point a finger at someone else there are always three directed back at us.
203 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 203 of 203Every time I read an article about healthcare in the United States as opposed to other countries, I always think of Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko. I have seen this film many many times. I even wrote a paper on it for my American film class last year. Every time I see this film, it just makes me sick because when Michael Moore interviewed the foreign doctors and people living in foreign countries, no one ever got turned away. But, when he spoke to Americans about their medical experiences, most of them got turned away because they could not afford the procedure or because they did not have health care. Now, he went to a bunch of different countries for this film. Even Cuba. And they HATE us! Needless to say, the Americans STILL was treated in the hospitals over there for only a fraction of the cost they usually have to pay. The most powerful part of this documentary, for me, was when Michael Moore brought September 11th relief workers to a Cuban hospital. Before he brought them over there, the viewer learned about how expensive medications and treatments were for these people. I was so saddened by the fact that they were not being taken care of properly after they risked their lives to help others. These were all firefighters, emergency workers, police officers, etc. I feel like after all they did to help others, they should almost be treated better than others when they need help. Most of them developed lung and breathing problems due to all of the smoke in the air from the plane crashes and they can barely afford to pay for their inhalers and such. One of the emergency crewmembers is a single mom and developed asthma, I believe. Her inhaler is one hundred and twenty-five dollars apiece. When she was taken to Cuba to be treated, it was a nickel. I was ready to cry because I thought about how many she could buy for one hundred and twenty-five dollars at the cost of a nickel. It is crazy to think that prescriptions and healthcare are so much cheaper elsewhere. It is not fair that we have to pay so much a month in healthcare and then pay MORE when our bills are not covered.
As for the article, I do not think it is fair that the hospital pretty much took care of these people for free and we get turned away. I am not cold-hearted, nor would I ever turn down helping someone, but it just is not fair. Instead of America being the “good Samaritan” all the time, we should start helping our own people first, then start helping everyone else.
After reading the article about undocumented immigrants going to health care facilities while in America and then being sent back to their home countries without having to pay the bills that are drawn up from their time in hospitals, I was met with two different thoughts.
At first, I was initially angry that these patients were able to get away with receiving the same care Americans receive, but then not have to pay for it. Many Americans do not have health insurance and they do not have the luxury of going to a hospital to receive health care and then not have to pay for it. My family used to always have health insurance, but once my parents split up and my dad lost his job due to bankruptcy, my family’s health insurance disappeared. It was a tough time adjusting and we did eventually receive insurance again, but once I started college in another state, where my insurance was only covered in my home state, I have been left without insurance again. It is a very tough thing to have because even when I have felt really sick, I have to evaluate if it is really serious enough to go to a doctor because I know if I go, I will be met with charges just for going and then have to pay for the medicine, which as we all know is not cheap. And if I go and find out my sickness was not as much as I expected, that just means that I have wasted money that could go towards something else. And if a surgery is needed, I know that bills will climb in to the thousand-dollar range, which is an amount my family can’t just throw out considering they are paying for two sons at expensive universities. So to see that these patients, who are not even legally citizens, get to skip out on the bills makes me very frustrated because it just shows how unfair many practices are.
However, once Sam mentioned how Americans in other countries receive the same health coverage without complaint, I almost contradicted myself. I thought of when my brother did a foreign exchange in Brazil and when he was sick and had to go a doctor, they didn’t mind making sure that he got better. I think it is the American stigma that we get very selfish when helping out others. As much as we say anyone can get anything here, if we see foreigners receiving things that we as citizens are not receiving, we are immediately overcome with anger because it is not happening to us.
Even though other countries have no problem with giving out health care, it’s usually because these countries have balanced health insurances. Obviously, people in Canada don’t mind if illegal immigrants get health coverage because every Canadian has health coverage so they lose no money. Basically, it all comes down to the US needing a better system for health insurance.
The issue of healthcare in the United States has always been a touchy subject full of ridiculous problems and unreasonably high costs. This article made me think of a story I saw a while ago about people who were getting prescription drugs that cost them something like a hundred dollars a bottle in the US for a few bucks in Cuba. The issue discussed in the article is more or less healthcare for illegal immigrants, its cost, who should pay for it, and what should be done about them. Clearly denying them lifesaving treatment isn’t an option, at least I don’t think anyone would agree with that. On the other hand, giving them free care and a free ride home at the cost of the American people is just about as ridiculous as the other extreme. Honestly I don’t really have an answer to this dilemma, but I feel like something needs to be done about it. I’m sure there’s a way some money could be required from these illegal immigrants receiving care, I’m sure not all of them are 100% broke right? The flipside of them being unable to pay though is why are they unable to pay? The answer to that is just as much that they are poor illegal immigrants as it is that the cost of healthcare in the United States is ridiculously inflated, to the point where anything without health insurance is pretty much screwed for the rest of their life, or at least deeply affected, by the costs they accumulate with receiving any serious healthcare. It reminds me of something I saw on the news about a guy who lost two of his fingers, and only had one reattached when he reached the hospital because he couldn’t afford to pay for the other. They told him it would cost him something like twenty thousand dollars a finger, and he didn’t have insurance, nor the forty grand to reattach both of them. Stories like that are just sad, and not something that should have to happen in a country as developed as America. As for Sam’s point about turning things around and looking at Americans living in other countries doing the same thing in the countries they are living in. I think two things need to be considering with that. First is that a good portion of Americans living in other countries have money, and aren’t the dirt poor illegal immigrants that are being treated in the United States, so were they to have to pay, they could. Secondly, I think that however other countries treat foreigners should not affect what we do with ours. Its clearly become a problem in the United States, and the United States needs to find a way to deal with it.
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