The State of For-profit Medicine in the USA
Posted on December 9, 2003
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If there was any doubt that socialized, publicly-funded, universal health care is the only feasible way to go about taking care of each other, this story about Galveston, Texas dispels them handily:
In the screening centre, Irene Perez has proven she’s “medically indigent.” Even though she makes only $650 a month, Perez will still have to pay $40 to see a doctor, probably once a week. Rosalyn McCray, the screener, doesn’t think a $40 fee is too much.
“My gut tells me they’re not going to wait. She looks like she’s in quite a bit of pain,” McCray says. “And I don’t think the $40 will be too much of an issue. I think they’re willing to make that sacrifice because she looks like she’s in quite a bit of pain. Quite a bit of pain.”
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“In a for-profit [system] there is no incentive to keep costs down, is there?” Malinow says. “So when people say ..oh … in the government we need to be fiscally conservative … blah blah blah … it’s all crap, because they know that what they want is to increase their profits and the only way to be increasing profits is for there to be more money in the system.”No one at Galveston’s hospital boasts about the health care restrictions. No one waxes poetic about so-called “financial efficiencies.” Many are prophetic, however, that what they’ve had to do represents the cruel logic of a broken national medical care system.
I think I’ll happily suffer paying higher taxes over condemning people to sleeping in their cars while waiting for a doctor or forcing them to make do with half-doses of critical medication. (Thanks Adam!)
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