Hey y'all, I am so sorry it has been so long since I wrote. I have been traveling alot and very very busy, which is not a good excuse, but anyway...
Today you are going to get a rant about public healthcare. I just got back from visiting the public hospital here and it was terrifying. I think anyone who is designing or wants a publicized health care system needs to come to Chile and check out what they have got. They would realize that publicizing US healthcare would be a huge step back for our country. Also let me note that this hospital I visited was brand new, and it is the only public hospital for hundreds of miles of Chile.
I have never seen an ER waiting room so full, nor an ER so empty and under-equipped. The only reason I recognized their defibrillator was from watching old EMT training videos from the eighties. They had a tiny triage room, capacity to treat 5 minor emergencies at a time, and only 2 beds in a room the size of my bedroom to treat serious problems like a cardiac emergency or trauma. If someone in one of the areas for more minor problems has a heart attack, they have to be moved into this room so they can treat them, and if there are more than 3 people in critical condition at a time, then tough luck. A few weeks ago a similar hospital in Santiago had a serious back up in their waiting room, so that people were waiting for over 24 hours without care. In an EMERGENCY ROOM.
After that we went upstairs to see the rest of the hospital. We asked about 8 times to clarify, but we heard right the first time that there are no doctors doing rounds or even on the floor most of the time. They come through once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and the rest of the time, if there is any sort of emergency, they have to call in a doctor from the emergency room or the one doctor in the ICU.
Unfortunately, I have seen problems such as these in the rest of the system as well. In the health centers the health professionals are overworked and underpaid, there are far too few doctors and especially specialists, and they all work in tiny cubicles made out of parts of hallways. People wait months to be seen.
Though I think this may be the best that Chile can do as a recently developed and very economically unequal country, I know it would be a step back for America. I have studied our health system as well, and though I do not doubt that change is needed, I do not think this is the way to do it. Changing from what we have now to a system such as Chile's would be disempower people and lower the quality of care.
I hate getting into arguments about politics, but I had to write about this because I was honestly terrified to see this hospital today and to think that this could be in the future for me and my family. Please inform yourselves. Why would we follow in the footsteps of countries that are not successful with their public health systems? I know someone who almost died because she got mersa in the UK, and when she got to the waiting room of the ER she was told to take a number. It took them four days to figure out what the problem was. America is better than that, and there are better ways to fix our healthcare system. We should go through the laws and make sure we are protecting people from the insurance companies, instead of taking the quick way out and just publicizing everything.
I am sorry if this has offended anyone, but I hope you realize that it comes from a good place. Please inform yourselves, please vote, and please be proud of how different and special our country is and can continue to be.
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