Guaranteed Healthcare

My daughter has given permission to tell her story that all may know. Recently she injured her hand and arm. Normally, because she is uninsured despite having 3 jobs, we would take care of it at home. But the hand just flopped around as if unattached. So we made the hard choice to go to the emergency room. Upon finding out she didn't have insurance after filling out 10 pages of forms - she was treated like dirt. It took 45 minutes for them to decide to do X-rays.

Then - for 2 hours and 15 minutes we sat totally ignored waiting on doctor... or someone... anyone.. to find out what happened and what the problem was. I kept trying to find out - but no one seemed to have a clue what was going on. So we sat, and waited. She was starting to become shocky from pain, but at least I managed to wander around enough to find a water fountain and gave her an aspirin. Finally - the doctor shows up, and using the timer on my watch I kept track of total time he spent with her. 57 seconds total. He did not listen to what she said, just did a couple of touches on the wrist, said it wasn't broken and walked out. 21 minutes later - as we try to decide if we were supposed to leave or not, a nurse comes in with a brace and instructions she is to take acetaminophen for pain. AND make an appointment for a MRI in 3 days.

All my daughter could say the whole time was "I'm so sorry for hurting myself - we can't afford another medical bill - I feel like such a fool." Now - let us break it down just a bit. Emergency room visit - $138, X-rays - $138, brace - $77, doctor consult - $220. Plus - I know from my own experience with them that a MRI is almost $5000, and of course there will be the standard 14 weeks of physical therapy at $75 per visit.

We have been tending to it ourselves - Ace bandage - $1, aspirin, $2. She's working with it and beginning to get use of the hand again - it was injured June 19th. We've agreed - even if it's a case of bleeding to death, a tourniquet and the gas money to drive 130 miles to a good hospital is preferable to health care services in our area.

She doesn't have health coverage because the premiums are equal to her pay - hence she'd be working 40 hours a week just for health coverage! It's back to the herbs and local dollar store for emergency health supplies for us. And my daughter - she's 30 years old, what does she have to look forward to in health care as she gets older?