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- Jun 23, 2005
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Out running over lunch today I came across another runner laid out in the grass suffering from heat stroke. Another guy came along and we carried her to the shade. He went for water and I called 911. She wasn't sweating, her skin was hot, she was in and out of consciousness, and when she was conscious she was delirious and slurring her speech. Evidently she had ran a couple of miles and just collapsed in the heat (we are in the middle of a heat wave with very high humidity). We told her we had called an ambulance and she tried to get us to help her get home instead because she said she was uninsured. We would not let her leave as it was obvious she would die if she did not go to a hospital. She couldn't anyway because she could not stand without us having to catch her. Just the same, at times when she was somewhat conscious she would attempt to stand up saying she could not afford to go to the hospital. I was literally begging her to not worry about it and just wait for the paramedics. Luckily the ambulance arrived after a few more minutes. All I will say is this. The whole country should be absolutely ashamed of itself that someone delirious with heat stroke is worried about going to the hospital because they are uninsured and thus will be saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt because of it. In no other modern industrialized nation would this be a consideration. No one in Australia or Germany or Japan or France or Canada, or anyone in any of our modern peer nations worries about going to the hospital when they are about to die because they don't have insurance. I see these posts from some of my Facebook friends in my feed about us being a "Christian nation". We are not a Christian nation as long as we allow this kind of a shameful travesty to go on. We our not even a good nation as long we allow it to go on.
I don't what the answer is. Maybe its single payer, maybe its a very heavily regulated private market, I really don't know what the answer is for us. I do know that what we are doing now with the ACA isn't working, what we did prior to the ACA wasn't working, the alternative to the ACA the Republicans proposed won't work either. All I do know is our current system is not just wrong, its immoral. The citizens of any other modern developed country would literally revolt against their government if their government even talked about going to an American style healthcare system.
I don't what the answer is. Maybe its single payer, maybe its a very heavily regulated private market, I really don't know what the answer is for us. I do know that what we are doing now with the ACA isn't working, what we did prior to the ACA wasn't working, the alternative to the ACA the Republicans proposed won't work either. All I do know is our current system is not just wrong, its immoral. The citizens of any other modern developed country would literally revolt against their government if their government even talked about going to an American style healthcare system.