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The first patient who called me doctor died a few winters ago. I met him at the St. Vincents Student-Run Free Clinic on Galveston Island. I was a first-year medical student then, and the disease in his body baffled me. His belly was swollen, his eyes were yellow and his blood tests were all awry. It hurt when he swallowed and his urine stank.
I saw him every Thursday afternoon. I would do a physical exam, talk to him, and consult with the doctor. We ran blood counts and wrote a prescription for an antacidnot the best medication, but one you can get for $4 a month. His disease seemed serious, but we couldnt diagnose him at the free clinic because the tests needed to do soa CT scan, a biopsy of the liver, a test to look for cancer cells in the fluid in his bellyare beyond our financial reach.
He started calling me Dr. Rachel. When his pain got so bad that he couldnt eat, we decided to send him to the emergency room. It was not an easy decision.
Theres a popular myth that the uninsuredin Texas, thats 25 percent of uscan always get medical care through emergency rooms. Ted Cruz has argued that it is much cheaper to provide emergency care than it is to expand Medicaid, and Rick Perry has claimed that Texans prefer the ER system. The myth is based on a 1986 federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which states that hospitals with emergency rooms have to accept and stabilize patients who are in labor or who have an acute medical condition that threatens life or limb. That word stabilize is key: Hospital ERs dont have to treat you. They just have to patch you up to the point where youre not actively dying. Also, hospitals charge for ER care, and usually send patients to collections when they cannot pay.
My patient went to the ER, but didnt get treatment. Although he was obviously sick, it wasnt an emergency that threatened life or limb. He came back to St. Vincents, where I went through my routine: conversation, vital signs, physical exam. We laughed a lot, even though we both knew it was a bad situation.
http://www.texasobserver.org/a-galveston-med-student-describes-life-and-death-in-the-safety-net/?=fb
LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)and fight for the decent health care that every American citizen deserves. They're too busy fighting for their lives.
The greedheaded swine in charge of Texas have written these people off as people who don't matter. After all, many of them won't be around to vote in the next election.
Thank you for posting this article. I wish every American could read it and see the utter cruelty of Perry and his minions.