According to the Governor of Mississippi (as we say here, thank heavens for Mississippi!) everyone in the state has access to health care. I assume that he means by that that anyone can turn up at the emergency room and get care.
I'm sure that that is true: emergency room doctors and nurses do indeed take care of people.
But having visited an emergency room a little over a year ago --- with a pain that I didn't think was anything (and the doctors quickly agreed) but was in my chest area, I know that there are issues here.
For example, I had insurance: so they were happy to treat me. But before the doctor came out and told me the good news that I was right to think that I shouldn't be worried (which is, of course, very different from not being worried!) I was greeted by a representative of the business office, asking, "as a courtesy" whether I had a credit card with me, and would be willing to pay for the other charges.
Getting scared by a chest pain that was nothing cost us a lot of money. Do I regret getting checked out? Of course not! But at the same time, it might be nice to live in a civilized country, which recognized that prevention is a lot cheaper than cure, but that multiple insurers have "tragedy of the commons" incentives against any one of them providing prevention, and so the country as a whole ends up paying for the cure. When the cure is possible.
Yours, thinking that it's sad that we have to mourn the remainder.
N
I'm sure that that is true: emergency room doctors and nurses do indeed take care of people.
But having visited an emergency room a little over a year ago --- with a pain that I didn't think was anything (and the doctors quickly agreed) but was in my chest area, I know that there are issues here.
For example, I had insurance: so they were happy to treat me. But before the doctor came out and told me the good news that I was right to think that I shouldn't be worried (which is, of course, very different from not being worried!) I was greeted by a representative of the business office, asking, "as a courtesy" whether I had a credit card with me, and would be willing to pay for the other charges.
Getting scared by a chest pain that was nothing cost us a lot of money. Do I regret getting checked out? Of course not! But at the same time, it might be nice to live in a civilized country, which recognized that prevention is a lot cheaper than cure, but that multiple insurers have "tragedy of the commons" incentives against any one of them providing prevention, and so the country as a whole ends up paying for the cure. When the cure is possible.
Yours, thinking that it's sad that we have to mourn the remainder.
N
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