Termyn8or
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Joined: 11/12/2005
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FR
Shouldn't really rail on the VA for this, things are rough all over. I cut my hand on the outside edge almost all the way from the wrist to about the middle of the edge of my pinky finger. I was dripping blood all over the place and as much as I avoid docs I am not stupid, this thing needed stitches. As I was looking at the wound, opening it up and seeing my bones a Woman sitting nearby just about freaked out. That was decades ago though, I think dripping blood is treated with more attention these days.
Of course the system sucks. You get an appointment but it will be during banker's hours so you have to take off work. What's more you might wait weeks for an appointment. No wonder people abuse the ER. What's more I'm talking about paying customers or those with insurance.
And while painful, not all hernias are life threatening. A friend of mine walked around with one for about a year. Severe pain does indicate an obstruction though, but how bad is it ? There is also the danger of a rupture, it all depends. But in the absence of these factors, people can live with a hernia. I don't recommend it. Even though I shun doctors, this is a matter of what I would call carpentry. They are wonderful at putting you back together, it's their diagnoses and treatment methods for disease with which I disagree. I do not question their sugical abilities.
In all fairness, from what I read in the OP, his friend got drunk after getting frustrated by the system while in pain. Perhaps not the best course of action, but nobody said he showed up at the hospital drunk IIRC.
Alot of people used to wear a truss. This device allows one with a ruptured hernia to function within reasonable limits. They generally work to prevent a rupture of the colon, and help keep it in place lessening the possibility of an obstruction. They are used less now because advances in sugical techniques have made a hernia operation about as involved as cataract surgery. In the old days it was a big PITA but now you are out the same day usually.
There are probably better triage methods than currently used. If in the ER a patient is in less pain laying down he should be allowed. Give him a few chairs to lay across if nothing else. But seeing both sides of the issue somewhere someone is thinking "Well we got five doctors, four patients dripping blood and one is white as a sheet". Which gets the care first ? These decisions must be made on a logical basis, and if that means you have to wait, hopefully your confidence that there is a damn good reason is not misplaced.
I would not base a case against government health care on this incident. While I agree that it is a bad idea, looking at the state of the industry overall, I just don't think they are doing all that worse than the norm. That quarter million people hospitals kill every year are not all due to the VA. It happens in the best, most expensive of facilities, as well as their "greasy spoon" equivalents in the ghetto. The whole system needs an overhaul, and there is a hell of alot of profit that needs to be taken out of it. I have no problem with RNs making fifty bucks an hour, or a doctor pulling down a cool quarter mil a year. It's the corporations behind those people sucking us dry with whom I have a problem.
However I must also remember that soon I go to work with the hope of pulling in a cool thousand bucks today in six hours. Why do we do that ? Because we can. Well they similarly have the skill to do what not many can, so to sit in judgement of people who had to go to school for near a decade and then had to work 44 hours a day their first year in the field might not be quite appropriate. My main problem with the situation is the drag on the cash flow caused by the corporate shell under which they work. This is only destined to grow if the government gets more involved.
That is the most cogent argument against government sponsored universal health care. Not that one person got pissed off at the VA. There are plenty of people pissed off at doctors all over the country, just look at TV ads. Malpractice lawyers advertise regularly. IMO, if it wasn't effective they would stop.
Leave it how it is. Despite the fact that I will have to come up with about five grand to get my eyeball fixed, having more government in our lives is still less desirable.
T
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So you think you want health care huh? - 
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