Healthcare Systems Failing in the USA

[pameladlloyd]

My husband is sitting in the next room, watching Meet the Press, while I sit at my computer and listen in, occasionally commenting on situations I find particularly vexing. There's a lot going on in the world today that's of concern (I'm understating. Bigtime!) and I'm not always happy with the ways in which politicians attempt to defend our country's position. But the thing that made me sit up and really pay attention, was the following statement, spoken by Senator Harry Reid:

In Nevada, for example, David, at our University Medical Center in Las Vegas, they stopped cancer treatment. People who are in Las Vegas--two weeks ago, women who had breast cancer treatment were said, "We have no place for you to go." They had to leave the state to do that. [link]

Now, I knew our health system was lousy, but it never even occurred to me that something like that could happen.

What other treatments, I wonder, have also been stopped. What is happening to the people who can't afford to travel out of state to seek life-saving medical treatments? How can we allow this to happen? Aren't there some less critical state governmental functions that could have been shut down, so that their operating funds could be funneled to this hospital? Why hasn't the federal government stepped in to prevent this?

This whole situation gets a big stamp of FAIL from me.

Comments

[marycatelli]

Or Canada, where one out of three doctors has sent patients to the US to get treatment they can't get in Cananda

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I've heard so many things, both good and bad about the US health care system in comparison to the systems in Canada and other countries. It seems likely that there are things the Canadian system handles better than that in the US, and things the US system handles better. I also know that there's great variation from state to state with regard to the health care system. I've actually seen it for myself and my family, as I've interacted with health practitioners here in Arizona and compared them to the care my family in Texas receive and the care I received, when I still lived there.