Guaranteed Healthcare

It was 1942; I was a child of four, who had fallen into a scalding, galvanized tub of hot water which a neighbor had set up for washing clothes; my family, and neighbors were very poor. Near death, the doctor refused to treat me unless he received $300.00 up front. My father told me that, had it not been for a visiting flight surgeon who stopped by to visit the receiving doctor at the hospital on his way to the Front during WWII; and who paid the full amount up front to have me hospitalized, I would not be writing you my story for the first time, ever.

Comment: In those days, I can understand, survival meant relying on chance enounters, and, "the kindness of others." This year, about three months ago,

I experienced the shameless behavior of an emergency rooms in San Diego, California. I went to pick up a mentally ill patient who was in a severe state of a psychotic break. When I arrived, the intake attendant at the hospital told they had no record of such a person being there. Had it not been for another patient waiting to be seen, telling me that a bag belonging the the patient was on a chair nearby, I would have left not knowing what to do; because, inside the bag were two hospital gowns and her purse.

Fortunately, I found her in a bathroom fully psychotic and endangering her life further because she is also a Type I diabetic.

Question: Why is it that in this present stage of sophisticated medical care possibilities must many who live in the U.S. continue to, in so many cases, continue to rely on "the kindness of others?" We deserve better; health care for all must be a right!