Just sign this innocent looking little disclaimer form that our lawyers have prepared...

Tickets to a Royals game? Isn't that more of a punishment for having to wait excessively long in the ER?

How about using the ER for EMERGENCIES! There is no reason to go to the ER because of the sniffles.

That's cuz there's too many yahoos going to the emergency room for stupid shiat. That leaves less time for people with a legitimate need.

vabeard
YA RLY. We have free clinics in Canada (just like the hospitals) that you can walk in, usually wait max of an hour and see a doctor. They're meant for less severe needs like colds, flus, removing stitches, blood work, etc...

Yet, people still go to the ER when they get cuts/bruises/sniffles/etc.

That said, I wouldn't want my doctors to rush through treatment and do a shiatty job. I'd rather they just had MORE doctors so they could do more work in parallel.

Sorry Johnny, daddy's dead - here's a pair of tickets...well, I guess you'll only be needing one.

Lets run hospital like businesses. They may actually turn a profit and give better service.


I completely agree

Yeah there is, vabeard. You can get treated without paying for it right away, and without insurance.

Guess who does that?

gopher321
To be ruthlessly honest, there's a few relatives I wouldn't mind "cashing in" for some Leafs tickets...

.
.
.

Oh, don't look at me like that. You would too, I bet.


You'd loose that bet.

I have no clue what sport the Leafs play and don't really care. Give me tickets to a Broadway musical (I'm not gay) boxing title match, (Told you I wasn't gay) or a soccer match (damn there goes that argument) and I might consider it.

/Not that there's anything wrong with soccer.

I was in the ER for three hours Saturday and didn't get shiat!

The Stealth Hippopotamus: I for one welcome the change. Lets run hospital like businesses. They may actually turn a profit and give better service.

I also welcome the change, because I hate the human race. Short term profits are the major rallying cry of businesses nowadays, even if it means long-term unsustainability or customer disservice. Whatever gets the quarter profits up, even if it means preserving the same level of abysmal service and charging more. After all, if you're in an emergency the closest hospital has an effective monopoly on your care because choosing the one an extra hour's drive may mean you show up DOA at their door.

But then, I think most people deserve to die. So I'm all for it, so long as I can make sure I don't ever get sick enough to need emergency care.

My baby had the croup a few years ago and we were in the ER for 2 hours. She was admitted for 2 days and the entire thing was free. Our hospital has a 15 minute wait policy, or your visit is free.

/came in handy
//her bill was over $2,000...didn't pay a dime.

And what planet are your from Stealth Hippo?

If the charge is $25 for an aspirin, and min $500 dollars a day for in room care, who is going to pay?

Recent heath care changes with my company makes the change from co-pay, and max amount, to YOU pay "X" amount plus copay. That means instead of maybe having a couple of hundred to deal with a major event, we now have thousands.

Is that a change you support? If so, DIAF.

I already pay in excess of $600 per month for health care insurance. Should I pay more? I think not.

BTW... Where is the better service improvement promise?

As an ER nurse, I can tell you these policies are ridiculous and dangerous. One policy instituted in some hospitals is to administer antibiotics if people report symptoms that could be pnuemonia BEFORE they are seen by a doctor. This, of course, is going to accomplish nothing but create drug resistant superbugs.

A coffin showroom would be more appropriate, with a coupon.

The Stealth Hippopotamus: I for one welcome the change. Lets run hospital like businesses. They may actually turn a profit and give better service.

They would only give better service if they had real competition. If you're hurt you're not going to drive two to three hours to the next hospital. This voucher system is crap, it's just a way of pleasing you (like a cat with a shiny toy) while they rape you with that hospital bill. One accident or one sickness can turn you into a surf for the rest of your life.

/Saw SICKO last night. I'm considering leaving the country now.

It's stuff like this that make me glad that I live in Canada...

Then I remember how badly people abuse the system here and realize that there's no real answer to the problem of ER wait times.

Dr. Venture: surf

Serf.

Saw SICKO last night. I'm considering leaving the country now.

If your opinion is so easily swayed that you can decide upon that course of action after watching such dreck as Moore's appeals to emotion masquerading as logic, I heartily hope you do. Please, inform yourself rather than letting people with an agenda and a profit motive present a prefabricated reality to you.

Where I used to live, they started opening "Urgent Care" centers, where one could have injuries that weren't life threatening but required attention (i.e. something on par with broken bones, stitches, etc.) attended to after hours without having to go the hospital, and it was covered by most major insurances.

It seems like a good idea, so long as people actually use them. In that case, I would expect the frivolous use of ER's would decrease, allowing them to see people who actually needed them. Of course, things never work like they're supposed to.

Saw SICKO today.

Makes me want to puke, and then move to Canada, or France.

Several years back I was a Michael Moore hater without really even knowing much about him. I just thought he must be terrible because he's not a Republican. Well, I liked Bowling for Columbine, and I loved SICKO. Again, it makes me want to puke, but I love the movie.

Perhaps there will be an uprising of sorts in the US due to this movie. I know it's probably wishful thinking, but I can dream, right??

I work at St. Jude hospital in Fullerton, CA as a transportation orderly. They have a system similar to this, where if there is a small mistake, like being sent to the wrong room, having to wait a long time for a nurse or a bed transfer etc, we have tickets in each department for free coffee, or movie tickets, etc.

It sometimes works if the offense is small enough, but when someone's dying grandmother has been waiting for an hour to use the comode, movie tickets normally just make things worse. Luckily I never have to give them out, I just let the nurses get chewed apart.

This problem will never go away. My first 4 years in the ranks of the gainfully employed were spent in a hospital. The stupid crap people cram up the ER's with is insane. Your kid's tummy aches & scraped knee caps are not emergencies.

On the one hand, you have dumbasses who go to the ER for things that would be better taken care of in a doctor's office (colds, rashes, ingrown toenails), and on the other hand, you have dumbasses who try to go to the doctor's office when they have something that requires a trip to the hospital (chest pain, broken limbs, "my mom's speech is slurred and her face is droopy on one side").

I think we just need dumbass reform. Who's with me?

/work in a doctor's office
//so I'm really getting a kick...

Mr. Jarndyce: Where I used to live, they started opening "Urgent Care" centers, where one could have injuries that weren't life threatening but required attention (i.e. something on par with broken bones, stitches, etc.) attended to after hours without having to go the hospital, and it was covered by most major insurances.

It seems like a good idea, so long as people actually use them. In that case, I would expect the frivolous use of ER's would decrease, allowing them to see people who actually needed them. Of course, things never work like they're supposed to.

You want to know something sad?

My mom was on Blue Cross through state disability and Medicaid. We have more urgent care clinics than I can count out here, and NONE OF THEM TAKE BLUE CROSS. Even the county facility refused to see her, because she actually has insurance (and fat lot of good it did her, too). And there was something like a 2 week waiting list to see her doctor.

Guess where we ended up every time she had a problem?

/she's off Blue Cross now, thank "Bob".

you know, this is actually an area that Wal Mart might do OK in. They had plans to open urgent care clinics in some Wal-Mart locations.

They'd be affordable, and would hopefully take some of the slack off of the emergency rooms.

I was in 5 different ER waiting rooms, and there were plenty of people with very minor issues. Small cuts, the sniffles, etc.

More 'doc in a box' clinics would be nice.

Kaiser Permanente has opened a couple and they've been doing a decent job. I've talked to many patients that were happy with the care given. They chose the urgent care clinic because they didn't want to clog up the ER.

Mr. Jarndyce
Where I used to live, they started opening "Urgent Care" centers, where one could have injuries that weren't life threatening but required attention (i.e. something on par with broken bones, stitches, etc.) attended to after hours without having to go the hospital, and it was covered by most major insurances.

It seems like a good idea, so long as people actually use them. In that case, I would expect the frivolous use of ER's would decrease, allowing them to see people who actually needed them. Of course, things never work like they're supposed to.


I went to an Urgent Care facility on the 17 of last month. They ended up sending me to the hospital because they didn't have an ultrasound there. I ended up at the local hospital ER and had to wait in the waiting room from 8:20 pm, to about 2:20am before they got me in. Didn't get to leave the hospital til 6:30am. And after all this, they still couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Just apologized for the excruciating pain that had me rolled on the floor and handed over some vicodine.

The reason these people show up at the ER with bruises, colds, and scraped knees is that they either have no health insurance, or their health insurance won't pay for office visits and urgent care. ER's can't refuse treatment to anyone, no matter their insurance status.

We should fix that little insurance problem first, before blaming the hospitals for long waits while little Savannah's ear infection (and her overanxious mother, usually) gets a doctor's full attention and takes up a valuable bed.

artichokes

Some of our Canadian friends mentioned the same thing happened there above, so I don't know.

I don't universal health care will be this great fix everyone believes it will be. I still think the US is too big to do it on a federal level. State by state would probably work a lot better.

No country with this large of population has ever tried universal care with any success.

Ya know, something's gotta give.

I saw the doc last week at one of those doc-in-the-box neighborhood medical centers. Not an Urgent Care, as this was more of a checkup and not an emergency. I had an appointment and STILL had to wait over an hour. And this is probably the best medical experience I've had to date.

ER visits are even worse. Mrs. Cthulhu was vomiting so we went to the ER (at a hospital now under investigation for financial farkery). After a 2 hour wait, the charge nurse threatened to have us thrown out of the Mrs. didn't stop vomiting. Unswayed by my terrorist use of nefarious logic ("But we're here BECAUSE she's throwing up!"), she called security and we were escorted out. I think the Mrs. got some on one of the guard's shoes.

Another ER visit due to some head trauma, we have to wait over 3 hours in a room full of people with the sniffles. If I didn't have the flu before I came in, I certainly had at least 3 different strains running willy nilly through my body after that. Well at least we weren't thrown out of this one.

Urgent Care any better? Hell no. Mrs. goes to the Urgent Care nearby, she has diabetic ketoacidosis, which is a rather serious life-threatening condition. We figure we could get her stabilized at UC because it's so close and the farking ambulance would take forever to get here anyway. Once stabilized, we could get her transported to the hospital. Well, 2 hours later (sniffles are numerous and apparently take priority), wife goes semi-comatose because she's dehydrated, has a blood glucose level so high the UC can't even measure it, and she's vomiting bile. She collapses in the waiting room. The desk nurse who made sure 20 ways to Sunday that we had insurance the moment we walked in chimes in "What's her problem? Sir, she needs to get up off the floor"

Rather than tickets to a sporting event (no ball teams out here anyway), I'd much rather a law be passed that the wronged party gets to c*ckpunch the entire medical staff. In addition, if you have to wait because of a room full of sniffles, you should be able to donate a c*ckpunch to them too.

/get some farking aspirin
//drink some farking liquids
///stay the fark home.
////Emergency rooms for for emergencies. Go see your family doc
//SLASHIES!

Seconding artichokes statement. Plus, the doctors offices are ridiculously backlogged as well--I've been one of those jerks in the ER before, but only when I was running a 103 fever for days and unable to eat and my doc told me the earliest appointment he could arrange was in 2 weeks. Sorry that I didn't want to wait on medical treatment until it was an emergency :-p

smellyrunningshoes

Agreed. Something needs done about the doctor backlogs. Med schools need to open up to more students. I never realized how hard and exclusive they were until I had a friend applying. Wow!

As the population gets older, we need to do something about this. I don't think med school should be easier to get into, but I'm seeing perfectly qualified applicants denied because there just isn't enough room.

artichokes: The reason these people show up at the ER with bruises, colds, and scraped knees is that they either have no health insurance, or their health insurance won't pay for office visits and urgent care. ER's can't refuse treatment to anyone, no matter their insurance status.

We should fix that little insurance problem first, before blaming the hospitals for long waits while little Savannah's ear infection (and her overanxious mother, usually) gets a doctor's full attention and takes up a valuable bed.

Because, of course, if the uninsured actually have an emergency they should just go find some quiet out-of-the-way place to die. It will reduce the surplus population.

Sadly, I suspect arbitrarily consigning some percentage of the population to an early death from lack of sufficient medical care is going to be the only way to provide decent medical care to anyone else. So I suppose I'm okay with that.

Oh it's in Kansas City, and they're probably Royals tickets, that explains it. They have hard enough time selling those as is, so it makes sense to give them away.

There's a lot of that goin' around.

Drakkenmaw: Sadly, I suspect arbitrarily consigning some percentage of the population to an early death from lack of sufficient medical care is going to be the only way to provide decent medical care to anyone else. So I suppose I'm okay with that.

Feh, you're the problem with the system. You have to be proactive! Kill em off once they lose health insurance. Sitting around waiting for them to kick off will only get you a chance at better service.

and people wonder why so many doctors are addicted to heroine.....

mmmmm Its things like this that make me glad i dont live in the States anymore.

Seriously, if you havnt seen Sicko, do so. Its not the end all movie that will change everyones mind or anything, but if you are fed up with the American health care system, it will give you more amunition in your hate.

I went to the ER (Japan) where i live, ambulance ride, fluids, bed, doctor care for about 40$ american out of my pocket.

think about a 3 hour trip to the hospital in the states, with the ambulance ride and how much it would cost you WITH insurance.

/Alcohol poisoning is the suck
//who would of known a 45Kg woman could drink you under the table, literally.

biobob
Agreed. Something needs done about the doctor backlogs. Med schools need to open up to more students. I never realized how hard and exclusive they were until I had a friend applying. Wow!

As the population gets older, we need to do something about this. I don't think med school should be easier to get into, but I'm seeing perfectly qualified applicants denied because there just isn't enough room.

Don't worry, there won't be a backlog forever. The number of people applying to med school is decreasing.

1996: 47,000 people applied
2003: 35,000 people applied (which is actually an increase from 2002)

Less money, less freedom to treat patients, increased fear of being sued = "Maybe I should go to law school instead?"

.... who wait half an hour for emergency room service.

The only time I or a member of my family have waited less than 30 minutes in an ER, we got there in an ambulance. Other than that is' 90 minutes minimum.

The ER isn't for emergencies, it's a free clinic for the indigent.

Ummm, what do you mean by "perfectly qualified" biobob ?

Do you think the answer to the problem of health care is to REDUCE the requirements to become a doctor?

anyone who maintains that medicine in the u.s. is anything but socialized is crazy. government's mitts are all over it.

i say let's try desocializing medicine in conjunction with low taxes and sound money and see how that radical experiment works.

wldncrzy14


I don't agree

FarkTastic229
I mean perfectly qualified. I would never suggest lowering the requirements. Remember, med schools can only take so many. After that cut-off there are people left out there with just as good as scores who simply got left out. They are often old to reapply the next year as they will almost be certain to get in. Many do not though, and give up.

Like I said, I have some people close to me who are going through this. I never realized how crazy it actually was.

Yeah... Look biobob I really meant no disrespect to your friends. I'm just really wondering what you meant by "perfectly qualified." There's a lot of wiggle room in that. It could mean they got 37P on the MCAT, have 3 years of volunteer ER experience, have a 3.95 GPA from a top 5 school, a 4.0 in the 2.5 years of required premed courses and have hobbies that include helping disabled children and poetry writing/piano playing? Or, do you mean they got a 24N, a 3.5 GPA from Podunk U, but really, really want to help people?

Drakkenmaw

Sadly, I suspect arbitrarily consigning some percentage of the population to an early death from lack of sufficient medical care is going to be the only way to provide decent medical care to anyone else. So I suppose I'm okay with that.

Can you actually say that with a straight face? Because its such an unrealistic, unfeasible, inhumane, unlikely contribution to improving the situation that you might as well have said nothing at all.

Why not just kill everyone? There, no problems at all!

birkin

I'm always curious if supporters of a totally private health care system have ever actually interacted with a company before. You don't exactly get to 'shop around' when you need your leg amputated. Oops, sorry sir! Here's your money back, and heres your leg. Perhaps you can find a better provider of surgery.

Are you saying you've never had to switch companies or find a better competitor? How do you propose doing that, post operation?

howdoibegin Better yet, we should have a totally socialized health care system. That way, the same sort of beaurocrats that run the department of public safety, the department of transportation, and the IRS will have complete say over your health. That's WAY better. They won't care, they can't be fired, but they will hunt you to the ends of the earth to pay your bill after the operation... if it ever happens before you die of your illness. Don't hold your breath.