Thursday, May 1, 2008

A reader responds: copays for firefighting?

A reader responded to yesterday's blog about health care:

I think it is immoral for health care to be treated as a commodity, as we do in this country. For someone to die because they don't have money for treatment (or for basic health screening and prevention) is as outrageous as having to fork over one's credit card to a firefighter or a policeman before they'll act in an emergency.

I thought the analogy to fire fighting or police protection was perfect. What do you think?

As an aside: For those who read the newspapers on line, do you find it a bit hard to absorb some of the ads first thing in the morning? This morning the Washington Post ran an ad across the top of the front page with a cute bunny hopping along and the tag line: Do you know rabbits don't vomit?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you didn't think my comment was too over the top.
I am a nurse and have worked in a variety of settings, but mainly with elderly and psychiatric patients. When I did utilization review at a psych hospital, fighting with the managed care companies to keep psychotic patients in a safe environment was one of this most dispiriting experiences of my professional life. It was unbelievable how mercenary these companies were. Do you remember when the psychotic mother of 5 in Texas drowned her children one by one? I was not surprised to read that her insurance company insisted that she be released from the hospital, mere days before the murders, because she had "been psychotic before and never done anything"
Even people that *are* insured do not get decent care much of the time. The greed of the managed care companies is limitless.