Social healthcare – baby died waiting for a doctor
Last month a three-month old child has died in a central city hospital of a Russian city [see the story in Russian]. Natalia Kazakova woke up at 6 AM to attend to her crying baby. As she has discovered the boy has high fever, she immediately called for an ambulance. The ambulance arrived in 30 minutes and paramedics advised to take boy to a hospital. They took mother and son to a local hospital where they were met by an ER doctor. He did not even look at the child, he just instructed the mother to sit in the lobby and wait for a pediatrician. So she did. During next three hours she was sitting in the lobby holding her baby while neither nurses nor doctors paid any attention to them.
At 9 AM someone suggested to the frightened mother that she shall go to another public medical center across the road. When she finally get there and reached the pediatrician office, the boy turned blue. The doctor measured his temperature and instructed mother to take off the child’s clothes. When she took the boy from the doctor he stops breathing. The medical personnel tried to revive the child but it was too late.
The child died not because of lack of medication, not because of substandard equipment or unqualified personnel. This tragedy cannot be even qualified as a medical error – the ER doctor would be able to save the boy if he just cared a little more. The real reason called “public healthcare”. For the last 90 years Russian Federation runs a highly bureaucratic, government-paid social healthcare. The whole generation of people who was born and raised in the former soviet republics remembers horrors of soviet “free” medical services. They can tell you stories about pieces of drills that soviet dentists sealed in root canals. They can tell you how a new-born child drops on a floor and died because nurses forced mother to walk to delivery room.
Do you still “hope for a change”? Do you still believe that Obama-Pelosi’s healthcare bill with mandatory public option will help you to get better or cheaper medical services? If you do, then ask yourself: do you want your hospital resembled the local DMV facility? Do you want your medical insurance coverage downgrade to the level of Medicare?
You are probable hoping that at least your out-of-pocket expenses will go down. And that your doctor and nurses will still be around to provide you with same level of medical services that you are receiving now. These hopes are naïve and therefore dangerous. What you will get is what soviet union have has all these years – a black market of medical services. Your out-of-pocket expenses will include bribes to doctors, nurses and hospital administrators. Medical services will be available to anyone, but this means you will have to wait in line. The waiting time can be hours (for a shot or a scheduled doctor visit), or months (for an MRI, or analysis), or even years (for serious operation). The line will be so long not only because of illegal immigrants, but mostly because people will pay to move ahead.
There is one thing you do not have to worry about: the people who push the “healthcare reform” down to Americas’ throat will not suffer from all horrors of public healthcare. They all will enjoy the special branch of it. You will see special hospitals for members of congress and senators. You will see special pharmacies, special ambulance, special ERs. You will recognize them by cleanliness, lack of lines and most importantly by security guards who will ask for your ID on the entrance. Is this the future you want for your country?