“Get it all the way up or you can’t be admitted to this hospital!”
[I don’t have permission to tell this story, so I have to tweak it into a parable.]
What the dickens has happened to our medical service delivery system? (Hint: Obamacare happened.) What do you think of a hospital where they tell you, “Sorry, you’re too sick to be admitted”? Or “too weak.” Like, “If you can’t clean and jerk 150 pounds, you can’t get treatment here.”
I grant that some parts of the country will have better hospitals than others. It’s a big country, there’s bound to be a lot of variation. Even so, there ought to be a bottom floor that no one’s going to sink through!
When I was a boy, doctors made house calls. If you got sick, you stayed in bed and the family physician came over to examine you and prescribe a treatment. Why did that system have to change? What was wrong with it? Why is it better to drag your ailing carcass through a sleet storm, sit for 90 minutes in a doctor’s waiting room, and then get packed off to a hospital where they won’t admit you because you’re too sick?
Yes, I know people to whom this has happened. Are we still in the United States of America? It’s starting to sound like a socialist hell-hole.