There are clear choices that have to be made in a pandemic on who gets a hospital bed and who gets an IV and sent home to work on recovery from there.
Then there is the support system for both choices. The first is following an established regimen for treatment of a virus that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The support for this is strong and effective.
But what about the latter of the two? If a person is sent home, the follow up with a home health care professional would be a critical component to maintaining bed space in the hospital while also treating patients just below that level of care, but needing an elevated care as well. This level of care doesn't exist
The health service companies and most assuredly the insurance companies would like you to believe that a system of aftercare does exist and there is an after care available- weeks afterwards where the crisis is over and you don't need one more retired nurse to remind you to take your meds.
What is missing in this pandemic is clear, multi tiered approach to fight the virus at all levels in in every patient in an immediate manner.
Why is it missing ? I don't know because there could have been community outreach training, identification and allocation of required essential equipment personnel just for this purpose.
When the Secretary of the Treasury takes back 500 billion in COVID 19 because it went unspent, then one can only conclude it was never designed to be spent.
I don't place the blame on our elected officials who failed us and yes, they did fail us in dramatic and deadly ways. I blame us. This is our country and we have allowed fringe players with conspiracy theories to join in our national conversations, we have chosen popularity over passion, power over prudence, and our own beliefs over the beliefs of others.
We supported banks making money off college loans and dragging down our brilliant students into a service economy geared for corporate profit. Binding them like serfs to an unfair, monetary system that rewards the top one percent at the expense of the 99 percent is a disgraceful act. So the banks and quasi govt. Lending organizations can make a little side money as well on interest and penalties.
I blame us for giving selfish and greedy false prophets the power over us, to lie to us, to encourage our baser instincts, and to divide and conquer our shared American experience.
Problems require solutions from level headed people. We don't need to fly flags on our trucks as if we are the American Isis or to wear our prejudices on our sleeves as if that gives them a value they do not deserve and will never be worthy of.
We have a constitution that protects our Right to bear arms so why do we argue on known facts? We also know that mentally ill people shouldn't be able to purchase automatic rifles. Front line workers in health care need PPE and our support and there is no legitimate reason we cannot support that request. There are solutions to these types of problems.
There needs to be a new area of health care where professionals and patients have a third choice, not just Doctor office or the emergency room. In one newspaper article after another we read of an elderly couple who waited too long to get treatment because one did not want to leave the other behind. They both get too sick and die within minutes of each other and we think how romantic that they had one last kiss. I'm betting they would have wanted more than that if they had a choice, if our nationwide healthcare system had a treatment regimen for them. They get the kiss of death from a broken system, designed to work in sunny weather and to the benefit of the insurance adjustors who want everything just perfect for their bottom line.
It's woeful and it forces older couples to stay home together for fear of leaving the other partner home alone with Covid19. It's not sweet, it's cold, heartless, and terribly inhuman and cruel and we must demand that a third tier of treatment be established and bring permanent change to this wholly inadequate pandemic threatened health care system.
Richard Fisher. COVID PATIENT , ICU , EMMC, BANGOR, ME
No comments:
Post a Comment