A response to a classmate who thinks that poor folks have to use the ER like a clinic

I understand and respect your viewpoint on the subject. Can you understand and respect that I have seen far too much from the other side? I actually took a call one night from a citizen who wanted a county 911 ambulance, a Mobile Intensive Care, Advanced Cardiac Life Support unit, to take her to Walgreens to pick up a prescription. Not only did she expect that $400.00 taxi ride, she was 9 kinds of pissed off when I told her that the county did not provide that kind of service.

Only in an Emergency Room can someone waltz into a business and announce that they are there to steal the services of trained professionals, and then have the ironclad juevos to complain because the very services they are there to steal are not provided within their defined time frame. And, they don't just complain, they complain loudly, indignantly, nastily, snidely, and sometimes even threaten the very lives of those trained professionals whose services they are there to steal! And trust me, it IS stealing when one takes something with no intentions of ever paying a dime for it. Many of these people who complain the loudest, the longest, and the most self-righteously, get tired of waiting and just leave. What does THAT tell you? It tells me that their so-called emergency . . . well . . . I guess it wasn't that much of an emergency after all, now was it? OK, so one argument is that the ER should provide services for people because it is the humanitarian thing to do, right?

Think of it this way . . . . . Just try and walk into a pharmacy, demand that your prescription for blood pressure medication be filled, and filled quickly, and announce that you do not have the money to pay for it, nor any kind of insurance to cover the cost of the medication, and just see how quickly your prescription is filled for you, because, after all, it is the humanitarian thing to do. I dare say you would be escorted out the door without any consideration of your humanitarian rights whatsoever.

The hospital where I work (a not-for-profit) nearly went under financially, because of the astronomical levels of indigent care that is provided there. The very neighborhood where the hospital is located has a huge demographic of indigent and illegals living within a close proximity of the campus and so we see far more than our fair share of that demographic. I don't mean to sound so jaded, but what I described above is not the exception, it is the rule for most every day. I have worked in our ER and I know firsthand how the days (and nights) can go. Not a single one of us minds taking care of true emergencies, whether they are legal or illegal, indigent or filthy rich, black, white, brown, green or purple, a life is a life, and each life is important and genuinely cherished. That's why we are nurses. I have seen (and participated in) the entire staff (including doctors, nurses, secretaries, business office staff, and techs) sob uncontrollably over losing a precious little life, all while moving along with caring for the rest of the patients. And I have seen a patient get highly belligerent because that little life was taken back to a room and treated ahead of him, the insensitive prick! It is that perspective from which I rant, and it that little life for which I get weepy, even today, years after the fact. Those kinds of things stay with you for a long time and are nearly impossible to forget.

If I have stepped on toes, or offended anyone with my comments, all I can say is . . . well . . . if the shoe fits . . . as it were. I will not apologize, because sometimes, a different perspective just needs to be pointed out.