Shhhh....
Don’t you know the to many on FR if yer not a WASP yer not a real ‘merican.......
That and the belief that emergency rooms should just allow people to die if they have a Hispanic name. (And for the record, my ancestry is about 90% Irish with the remainder being English and Scottish.)
“If yer not a WASP”........
Underneath the comments made about this and other stories, though, is real concern about how each of us will actually pay in $$ and cents for those who don’t pay into any medical insurance system now or in the foreseeable future. Somewhere I heard a statistic that, counting fire, police, water, sanitation and medical costs, the bill comes to somewhere under $20,000/year on average for every person here illegally, making our income needs higher.
Now, on the other hand, no one, and I do mean no one, even wants to think of the kind of callousness and cruelty that occurred in this situation for this woman, or, for the paraplegic man left with a broken colostomy bag by the side of the road in LA. These are horrific cases.
I never wanted in my youth to think that money would buy off these and other ills. Instead the ills themselves have gotten worse. In VA and other hospitals, for example, you hear about amputating the wrong leg, etc., or that a veteran would be contacted for restitution payment of $8,000 for some medical error.
Who would receive the transplant, the chemo or dialysis, the premie care or back surgery under a nationalized system? How would these decisions be made and by whom? Where would research dollars come from and to what interests would they be directed? How would a nationalized system compare with the federal operations of, say, the post office, VA or Social Security in its handling of services and funds?
I am a WASP, yes. I have also learned to my chagrin that you do get what you pay for in every case. My idealistic nature has run hard against the practicalities of details, and it is those details that cause me concern. In short, bias or prejudice notwithstanding, the concerns that underlie these almost unbelievable injustices are expressions of undeniable and difficult decisions we have to make before they are made for us.