How not to die in America
WARNING - GRAPHIC PHOTOS IN THIS ARTICLE
"How not to die in America" is a cautionary tale written by Molly Osberg.
It details her experiences after falling critically ill with a staph infection that created a hole in her lung, put her in hospital for weeks followed by months of recovery. Fortunately for Molly she had:
a) health insurance that paid all but $2,654.42 of the $648,221.53 bills
b) disability insurance from state and employer that kept a paycheck coming in so she didn't get evicted and go bankrupt
c) a network of doctors, healthcare providers, friends and family who looked out for her and after her during the whole experience
Molly points out, these day she is just one of the increasingly rare people who has access to this kind of life-saving insurance and support in America. The rest of them - yup they will just die or go bankrupt trying not to.
She goes on to detail what might have happened if she had not had some or all of these, and the consequences aren't good - many result in her untimely death, the rest result in bankruptcy for her or her family.
As Molly points out, each year in the US tens of thousands do die prematurely - more than those from gun violence and more than those from car accidents. All highly preventable and cost-effectively so, if we could be bothered to. Yes ironically saving lives saves money but no. Duh! Good old free-dumb leads Americans to deny access to health care as a right. In what universe is the right to a firearm to protect your life held inalienable but the right to health care to save your life AND MONEY written off as a really bad idea? Yup, only in America.
WARNING - GRAPHIC PHOTOS BELOW
I should add that I have some personal experience here. In 2013 I had a sporting accident that left me on a mountain with a face looking like a pizza. My left eye was cut open to the bone, my nose was broken, my arm and knee were also cut to bone. To the layman, it would have been difficult to discern if I was critically injured and would die imminently. Fortunately for me, I had a best friend with cellphone coverage and I was close to civilization. 40 minutes later I was being strapped to a backboard for a 7-minute helicopter flight to a hospital.
When I got there I looked like this:
YES I REALLY WARNED YOU...
In the following hours at a state-of-the-art facility, I had x-rays, exams, painkillers, and some agonizing cleanup and stitching back together of my face. A day later I was discharged having been deemed not at risk of brain injury or internal injuries. For several days friends took turns to spend time with me and keep me entertained as video and computer use were not allowed lest they mask symptoms of brain trauma. Friends and family were briefed on signs of concussion and PTSD and I slept with goop on my face and fluid running out of my ears. So much drainage collected in my ears I had to have them syringed by a doctor and then undergo hearing tests. For a year more I visited a plastic surgeon on a regular basis who observed the recovering of my eye and stood ready to give me plastic surgery which I eventually declined.
For the helicopter ride to the hospital I was billed $35,000. For the rest of the treatment - one day in hospital, not even an ICU - another $60,000. Because I was one of Molly's increasingly rare lucky ones I ended up paying about $4,000 out of pocket. I limped back into work after just a week wearing an eyepatch over my hugely swollen eye, mostly because I was bored of sitting at home. I wore my beat up face as a badge of honor and sat in front of the computer and did nothing for several days because truth be told my brain and body was so beat up and fried from the experience I was useless. I took two weeks before I could open my left eye again to discover I could still see out of it - albeit at much less than 100% (which is true to this day - my pupil is permanently dilated, and I see weird colors out of that eye).
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I consider myself very lucky - in one of those other universes Molly detailed in her article I would have died on the hillside, or made to a hospital hours later only to succumb a staph infection from the wound, been left horribly disfigured and probably blind in one eye. Fortunately for me, I discovered how not to die in America. I hope you are all so lucky one day.
Saw you stopped by my blog so I wanted to thank you and say hello! Some graphic stuff, I am sorry you had to go through that! You bring a valid point with the health care in America.
I am glad that Obama is out and hope that the Obama care stuff goes away. It's illegal for me to not have healthcare. I've already felt the consequences by getting fined for not having healthcare a few years ago.
Thankfully I've had a pretty good run. Your story certainly helps me realize things could be worse. Glad you survived!
Steem On!
The labeling of ACA as "Obamacare" was one of the biggest lies foisted on us by the GOP. It was nothing like what Obama really wanted, and was such a pile of compromises it barely deserves his name. I have to ask, do you live in one of the states that declined to take Federal money to pay for medicaid expansion? That was a cruel and unusual f**k you to the American people by so many states. Done by local legislators solely to try and sabotage the ACA, legislators who would never be affected by the consequences themselves.
Anyway, of course, the correct solution was that everyone should have access to healthcare, better healthcare, and cheaper - you just make it part of the budget with a single payer, like we do for military spending. Imagine that we did the military like we do healthcare, ridiculous. And I personally find it immoral that a country which forces people to fight and put their lives on the line in its defense will not actually guarantee us health care. If anyone ran an actual business like our country is run they would fire the CEO, fire the board, and start over from scratch...
Seriously we should just require everyone to do national service (not necessarily military - there really isn't that much need for 5 million people in the military at any one time) for at least a year, maybe two, and then give them free healthcare for life in exchange. And those people can help rebuild the infrastructure while they are at it, learn to get on with ordinary people (absolutely no exemptions - even for bone spurs!) and rekindle national pride and unity. A bit more "E pluribus unum" would go a long way to solving all our problems IMO.
And with single payer then we can actually halve our national expenditure like the other countries in the world who actually have the best healthcare and health outcomes. We could actually start promoting things like preventative healthcare, imagine that.
Even Donald Trump said that:
The reality is that was a false promise. The GOP never wanted the "replace" part of "repeal and replace" and had nothing, absolutely nothing to replace ACA with that was acceptable even to their own party, let alone anywhere near close to what Trump promised. Now we are stuck in this twisted compromise limbo land where people aren't getting cheaper insurance, insurance companies are getting screwed, health costs are going up, and health outcomes are getting worse. So f**ked up that they took a bad compromise and made it worse.
Anyway, sorry for the rant... and thanks for stopping by. Let's just say having lived in a country that gets it at least half-way right I've seen the more humane, more moral, more Christian even, alternative to the US "healthcare" system.
I agree, the whole health reform was not to help the American people at all it was about profit.
I do live in Wisconsin and I am pretty sure my state declined to expand medicaid. While I still have medicaid, or the state healthcare, it's only because of my wife and kid. Without them, I really wouldn't qualify. I feel pretty lucky to even have it. I like what I've heard about Canada's healthcare system but I haven't considered the pro's and cons since I don't live there.
I've never done national service myself, but I've always felt that if there was some sort of requirement for it I would be a better person. To learn things that can only be taught though experience.
The best thing that I can do is try to stay healthy on my own. People rely too much on government and healthcare to stay healthy. It's a scam. We shouldn't have to pay so much just to be healthy.
I'm still waiting for Trump to follow through with what he said, but I've been around enough presidential elections to realize that they'll say anything to get elected. Once elected it's business as usual.
Pretty hardcore, you are lucky to be alive and still have your sight in that eye.
But the insurance-government-regulated medical system in the USA is the actual cause of many deaths in USA because of centralizing everything most Staph infection happen in the hospitals. So much is wrong. I just want to be able to buy my own high deductible "emergency" insurance. But you couldnt /cant do that with ACA.
So I am walking around uninsured for past 5 years. It is cheaper than the options offered by ACA.