Health Care Costs

If you really, really want to know the number one reason that health care costs are so high, don't blame the insurance companies. Don't blame the doctors. Don't blame the drug companies.

Blame the thousands of morons that clog up the system everyday.

Here is an actual page, to my ambulance corps, minus identifying info:

8/31/03 11:43
F 42 yrs. Mouth pain from dental work yesterday

I went to the Emergency Department (2 separate hospitals) with three patients yesterday, all of whom needed transport. The lines at both were full of walk-ins, and as I waited for my partner to complete her paperwork at one, an ambulance drove up, the EMT helped the patient climb from the back, and she walked into the E/D, significantly faster than the EMT was walking.

As a corps, we transport less than 50% of our calls. We make an effort to sort things out and try to not become a taxi. Most of the other ambulances in our area, and, of course, the two paid services, make less effort. The Emergency Department of hospitals are clogged, not with the needy and deserving, but with the ... I don't have a word for it. I've heard ambulances called for a man with a bug in his ear. I've personally transported a guy who lived three blocks from the hospital, and had no way home from our town, so he claimed an illness. He was gone from the E/D before we had our paperwork done. We went to a nursing home once, with the call "CPR in progress". Found the patient talking quite nicely to the firemen who had first responded. No CPR, no idea "who" would have said that to the 911 operator.

The costs of healthcare go up with every one of these folks that find their way to the hospital. Stuff I wouldn't even call my doctor about, so it's not lack of a primary care physician.

In this county, on a weekly basis, at least one child under 10 is transported as a "mental hygiene" arrest. The one's I've taken went solely because their parents weren't very good at their job. So, push it off on the hospital if you cannot discipline your child or deal with their temper tantrum.

Health care would cost a whole lot less in this country if about twenty percent of the population had even a modicum of common sense and personal responsibility.

-- posted by Chuck at Sunday, August 31, 2003 | E-mail | Permalink | Main | 0 comments

You Big Mouth, You!

Archives

Other Sites of Note

Sunday, August 31, 2003

Health Care Costs