Here's What Socialized Medicine Looks Like When The Money Runs Out
by Daniel Greenfield: Socialized medicine is low quality. It draws substandard medical personnel and has high wait times. But at least it's free. Or semi-free. Right?
Until the money runs out. Then you pay for every single thing.When Jose Luis Vasquez was brought to the emergency room last Monday with a gunshot wound to the chest, the worst of his nightmare should have been over. He had survived an armed robbery without losing any major organs and needed only what doctors described as minor surgery.
Vasquez is being treated in one of Venezuela's largest public hospitals, in Valencia, an industrial city about 150 kilometers (95 miles) from the capital, Caracas. Days later, he is still laid up in a humid room at the public hospital. A makeshift surgical drain, made from an empty gallon bottle, draws fluid from his lungs. All the supplies, from gauze to syringes, had to be purchased out of his pocket."I had to buy this needle," Vasquez says, pointing at the yellow casing secured to his right arm with transparent tape. "This cost me 1,000 Bolivares. The hydrogen peroxide was another 2,000 Bolivares -- there was nothing in this hospital."
Those two amounts add up to about 30% of the monthly minimum wage in Venezuela... His fears of being robbed continue inside the hospital, so he hides the money he needs for medicine under his blanket inside his underwear...
Luis Hidalgo, who's been in a wheelchair with a leg in a cast after a car accident, says he's been awaiting further treatment on his leg for 40 days. He, too, had to buy his medical supplies, and he says they were stolen when he was heavily sedated.
"A few weeks ago I went into the operating room and, when I came out, not only had I not had the surgery but everything was gone."
Some in the hospital believe the medicines are being swiped from the facility to be sold on the black market, as government rationing of medications has made even basics, like pain relievers, hard to come by... And don't ask the doctors for anything.Doctors attending to these patients are also without resources. A group of residents treating Vasquez and Meza said they don't even have paper to write prescriptions on and, up until recently, were working without any light in their lounge. The government's excuse should sound familiar.Maduro's government denies there is a crisis and says his administration has opened more than 2,000 urgent care facilities throughout the country. He also accused the opposition of plotting to privatize the country's national health care system. It would be a shame to privatize health care this wonderful. Just think, it might actually become affordable. And patients would actually get medical treatment instead of having their medicines stolen from them.
Like most features of a Socialist country, this is the eventual inevitable outcome. This is what a lot of medicine looked like in the latter decades of the Soviet Union. NHS doesn't look like this yet, but give it time and it will.
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Daniel Greenfield is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. David Horowitz is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service
Tags: Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Mag, Obamacare 2.0, socialized medicine, after money runs out, Venezuela, Soviet Union To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the Socialized Medicine, When The Money Runs Out, ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Until the money runs out. Then you pay for every single thing.
Vasquez is being treated in one of Venezuela's largest public hospitals, in Valencia, an industrial city about 150 kilometers (95 miles) from the capital, Caracas. Days later, he is still laid up in a humid room at the public hospital. A makeshift surgical drain, made from an empty gallon bottle, draws fluid from his lungs. All the supplies, from gauze to syringes, had to be purchased out of his pocket."I had to buy this needle," Vasquez says, pointing at the yellow casing secured to his right arm with transparent tape. "This cost me 1,000 Bolivares. The hydrogen peroxide was another 2,000 Bolivares -- there was nothing in this hospital."
Those two amounts add up to about 30% of the monthly minimum wage in Venezuela... His fears of being robbed continue inside the hospital, so he hides the money he needs for medicine under his blanket inside his underwear...
Luis Hidalgo, who's been in a wheelchair with a leg in a cast after a car accident, says he's been awaiting further treatment on his leg for 40 days. He, too, had to buy his medical supplies, and he says they were stolen when he was heavily sedated.
"A few weeks ago I went into the operating room and, when I came out, not only had I not had the surgery but everything was gone."
Some in the hospital believe the medicines are being swiped from the facility to be sold on the black market, as government rationing of medications has made even basics, like pain relievers, hard to come by...
Like most features of a Socialist country, this is the eventual inevitable outcome. This is what a lot of medicine looked like in the latter decades of the Soviet Union. NHS doesn't look like this yet, but give it time and it will.
--------------
Daniel Greenfield is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. David Horowitz is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service
Tags: Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Mag, Obamacare 2.0, socialized medicine, after money runs out, Venezuela, Soviet Union To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the Socialized Medicine, When The Money Runs Out, ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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