The ambulance dilemma

Making the decision to call for an ambulance in the US.

A very good friend of mine, Michael, ended up in hospital a few weekends ago. You can read entirely why on his blog. To sum it up his drink was spiked at a club which essentially made him an outline of a human being for a few hours (with days of getting over it afterwards). It not only caused myself and my friends great worry but something happened during the chaos of trying to get him help that I think is extremely telling of today’s US healthcare system.

Our group of six friends were all dancing as a group. I think we all noticed Michael was looking very, very vacant and something was definitely not right. His pupils were tiny and he was clearly not involved in our group anymore, it was like he was dreaming the whole time. That’s when Sam spoke to him and got very little response so he helped him to the lobby of the club and we all followed. Then it turned bad, his eyes closed and all communication with him was lost. We carried him to the sidewalk in the hopes a bit of fresh air and some water might get him to come around but no luck.

This is when it hit me.

Both Richard and I were trying to keep Michael in contact with us, saying his name, asking him questions, giving him little pep talks, whilst the others tried to find whatever they could to try and keep Michael with us. Sam then lent over and asked what would normally have been a pretty easy question for me to answer:

“Should I call an ambulance?”

I asked him to wait a few minutes, for some reason we did a back and forth to agree upon the amount of minutes. We came to the agreement that 3 minutes would be our signal to call an ambulance if we still got no response from Michael. Within 20 seconds or so of that decision being made though we had in fact called an ambulance.

Those seconds were filled with a lot of questions though. Questions which, when I later replayed the situation in my head, shouldn’t have even have been asked. The only reason I was even debating calling an ambulance was so I could give myself time to think.

“Does he have health insurance?”

“Is the health insurance going to cover all the costs?”

“Does he have savings in case it doesn’t?”

Just three of the questions that I shouldn’t even have had to ask myself. Those three questions could have cost Michael his life because for all we know it could have been much worse and it was already pretty damn bad.

Why does one of the world’s most powerful countries, you could argue the most powerful of all, not have a way for its citizens and residents to get medical attention and care when they need it without being handed a bill at the end? Other countries are able to achieve such a thing without any loss (and in some cases improvement) of care. Not only that but the overall spending on healthcare is lower due to the single entity bargaining strength of one organization doing the bidding for a whole country of people.

I love America, I really do. If you know me at all you’ll know I often post about San Francisco like it’s a family member. But healthcare needs to be fixed before even more people suffer at the hands of the almighty hospital bill.

This issue is often diluted with idiotic ideas such as people believing that universal healthcare removes responsibility and is only wanted by people who feel entitled to free healthcare.

Fuck everyone who even thinks like that.

Universal healthcare is about caring for your fellow country men and women. It’s about providing a safe environment for your whole population without throwing the unfortunate into an even bigger shit storm. It’s about getting the care and attention your friend needs without the worry of fucking his life over with medical bills.

I love you, America. Please just fix this already.