Even the Queen of Spain Has to Endure Rationing

My friend Erin Kotecki Vest, whose husband works in the film industry, who has health insurance, and who is not an illegal immigrant, a bag lady, or an old person, has been a victim of health care rationing. What has happened to her over the past month is exactly what Americans always say happens in Canada or Britain, and why they don’t want national health. But Erin, from her hospital bed, is screaming “let me on OBAMACARE.”

How could it be worse with national-health-public plan-single-payer-socialized-medicine or whatever the ill-informed think Obama’s suggestions for reform are?

Erin has been puking for a month. She tried to ignore it. She didn’t eat much. She tried not to go to the doctor. She tried to hide it.

But then she began having episodes of rectal bleeding, and they frightened her. (This isn’t something she hasn’t already confessed on her blog). So she tried to see a gastroenterologist.

She doesn’t live in a rural community; she lives in the LA metroplex somewhere. In theory, there’s no doctor shortage where she is. But it took her almost a month to get an apppointment for an endocscopy and a colonoscopy, (tubes with cameras up the back and down the front to see what’s in there) and while waiting she finally landed in the emergency room, where –of course–she had to wait in a hallway for four hours to get admitted to the hospital.

Once in the hospital, it took three more days to get the tests, and the diagnosis of gallstones and diverticulitis (imagine having both of those at once!). In the mean time, she was cooling her heels in a $1000+ a day hospital room, waiting for outpatient tests. And she’s on some pretty stiff drugs.

Once the diagnosis was made, Erin had to wait once again. They have decided rhwy are going to take out her gall bladder, but not until Saturday!

You can read all this in her Twitterstream and that of her husband, who has been managing two kids back and forth from the hospital all week.

Once they make her wait all week, they will then perform what I presume will be a laparoscopic cholysystectomy (taking your gall bladder out with two tiny incisions) and then throw her out of the hospital on the same day.

And wait until she gets the bill for the part that isn’t covered by her insurance.

This is what the opponents of health care reform are fighting to keep? You have got to be kidding. It’s too bad we no longer have an educated population capable of reading and absorbing facts. There’s no way this would have happened in Canada or Europe, because of the amount of pain she is in from the gallstones.

People what the hell are you doing? Rise up in the streets and argue for ANY change in the current system, which is 25th out of 30 developed countries in effectiveness, and makes us 29th out of 30 developed countries in longevity. Quit kidding yourselves; our health care is suffering from an extreme case of #suckit.

Erin, get well soon; my thoughts are with you in the hospital. I am sorry you are going through this, girlfriend.