Cycloptichorn wrote:Miller wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:Miller wrote:Miller wrote:Miller wrote:The effects of "Universal Health Care" on quality and availability of health care for all American citizens.
How far will health care be rationed ?
Average wait times in the ER at MGH are now 8-12 hours/patient.
And for some patients needing a bed, the total wait time in the ER can be 24 hr.
And this is the system which we don't want to change, why?
Cycloptichorn
This has nothing to do with "THE SYSTEM". It has to do with the fact that excellent hospitals must now ration their care, because of large numbers of patients who are ill and needing care.
Don't you think that if more people had access to regular doctor care, less would visit the emergency room?
Cycloptichorn
A woman with advanced colon cancer had surgery to remove part of the affected intestinal area, at the MGH. She had major medical health insurance and was in her 40s, upper middle class and professional.
A short time after her surgery, while at home in an upper middle class suburb outside Boston she develop intense intestinal pain. After consultation with her MGH surgeon who had performed her colon surgery, she and her husband went to the MGH ER, for evaluation and treatment.
Her time on a cot in the ER was 8-12 hours, during which time she was medicated for her pain and vomiting. She required a hospital bed and it took a considerable time (24 hr?), before she could be transported from the ER to her hospital room.
Surgery for her intestinal blood clot was then scheduled.
The primary problem today is the overloading of our major urban hospitals, which for the most part are our major teaching hospitals. ( In Boston these are affiliated with Boston U, Tufts U and Harvard medical school.
Perhaps more hospitals need to be built to fill the demand for more medical care and to accomodate the increasing demand for hospital beds.
As the population ages and the number of boomers increases, some hospitals will have to close their doors to incoming patients because they're now working at capacity.
Universal health care coverage only increases the problem and for that reason, many MDs are also leaving medicine because of the stress associated with rationing.
