The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Morrigoon]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26794291/

A Tale of Two Sickbeds (US vs UK health care)

[3894]

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26794291/

A Tale of Two Sickbeds (US vs UK health care)

I've had experiences that are very close to the UK experiences in the article.

The hospital couldn’t find an extra hospital bed, so I spent my first night hooked up to an IV on a gurney in the middle of a row of men and women, my sweaty skin sticking to the plastic. A shriveled woman in the bed to my right issued loud and largely unintelligible commands to nobody in particular. A steady flow of patients visited the bathroom right in front of my bed.

In 1999, two Northern California teaching hospitals were somehow merging. (I think they've de-merged since.) My dad was in the hospital. The above could have described what I saw. At the time, I called it Bombay Central Hospital because there were so many people jammed in.

But unlike the personal care I received in the U.S., in London, I felt like I was on a vast and often creaking conveyor belt, and there was a big risk of falling through the cracks.

Some day I'll tell you about what happened after I had a simple gall bladder removal in a Wisconsin hospital - how the only RN on night duty on the ward had no idea how to cath, how the surgeon couldn't be located the next day to sign me out of the hospital so I had to remain hooked up to an IV for hours while my hand swelled up painfully, how not one doctor checked on me after my surgery (not even the following day), how no one brought me food or medications I had been ordered, how I was denied access to a patient advocate, how I contracted bacterial pneumonia from my one-night stay.

Who needs England when we have it the same here?