I want to share a quick story about how I experience the effects of rising health care costs in my line of work.
I work as an EMT (emergency medical technician) responding to emergencies, stabilizing patients, and transporting them to emergency rooms. Getting people to definitive care at a hospital for trauma accidents, cardiac conditions, strokes, seizures, etc. is imperative to their survival and long term-health, however, it is often very costly. As we know, not everyone has insurance but emergency responders will never turn a patient away. Those same people are generally impoverished, and ultimately more vulnerable to disease compared to wealthy individuals who can afford preventive care and quality insurance.
That being said, I remember a specific patient experiencing an ischemic stroke (block of blood vessel in brain) and needed to be taken to the closest stroke center. My partner and I stabilized the patient as much as we could and transported the patient immediately. The patient was an elderly, lower-class Hispanic male without insurance. My partner drove while I monitored the patient in the back while questioning the wife who rode in the back with me. She mourned. She was afraid. I assured her that we were doing our best and that her husband was in good hands. After a while, she explained that it was his third stroke and that they weren't even done paying for the first treatment. She was afraid for her husbands health, but at the same time, she was afraid to think about how they would pay off the hospital bills for a third round. I don't know if he passed away after dropping him off in the ER, but I know that his wife would be left the pay for the bill either way.
With the cost of health services and the current health care system, people can't even concentrate on wishing their loved ones to get better soon. People resort to questioning if being saved is even worth it. Some people disproportionately more than others. How can we let this happen, even in a "developed" society?
Super sad to hear personal stories of people who have been over financially burdened by problems that can be fixed. I resonate with this story. As I have been learning in my Public Health class about the very sad state of insurance in America; I hope, our generation can make some massive changes so that families will no longer die or be forced into debt in order to remain healthy.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who hopes to work in health care, I resonate with your story. When I was training to be an EMT, I had a ride along that picked up a woman who had absolutely no insurance and was a recent immigrant. None of us were able to communicate with her so we were forced to leave her with a clinic that will ultimately charge her for medical costs. I felt so helpless and also disgusted with how the health care providers had to deal with it. But in the end, I couldn't stay angry at them because that's how the protocol goes. I don't understand how our "developed" society still continues to do this, but I hope that our generation can find a way to help these individuals fall into a safety net, because even with the recent reform, many still fall between the cracks of our health care system.
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