Woman Doing OK After Being Impaled By Tree
Michelle Childers, 20, and her husband were driving down a rural road along a river in the north-central part of the state on Sept. 5 when a spruce tree crashed through the passenger side window of their pickup truck.
With no cell phone service in the area, the couple drove to the Lochsa Lodge, near the Idaho-Montana border, to call for help and arrived about an hour after the tree limb went into her.
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While Childers waited to be flown by helicopter to St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont., she said a nurse and her husband were staying at the lodge and tried to calm her down.
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While Childers waited to be flown by helicopter to St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont., she said a nurse and her husband were staying at the lodge and tried to calm her down.
And because there’s no such thing as a news story without a political angle:
Childers doesn’t have insurance. Friends have set up an account for the couple at a local Sterling Savings bank location to help pay for her medical expenses.
Huh.
1) Had no medical insurance
2) Got impaled by a tree
3) Got airlifted by helicopter
4) Had a six hour surgery
5) Is doing fine
6) Had no medical insurance.
But… but… I thought that no medical insurance meant you were left to die in the streets here in AmeriKKa???
6 Responses to “Here’s your “yeesh” medical story for today”
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Her friends at sterling savings aren’t going to be able to scrape up enough to pay for the helicopter ride, never mind the surgery.
So, she’s going to have a gigantic stack of medical bills that will mostly be written off by the hospital (driving up the costs for everybody else), but there will still be plenty left to go to collections.
People without medical insurance don’t die in the streets, they get bankrupted.
Working as intended? You’re paying for it either way.
Bankruptcy is a very stong possibility
> Bankruptcy is a very stong possibility
Yes, indeed. And in seven years, her credit will be clear.
What’s worse? Having individuals bankrupted because they were unable to pay their bills – a process that while painful allows them to keep their lives together and in seven years leaves them free and clear – or have the whole nation bankrupted, a process that leads to mass unemployment and misery across the board?
And, yes, medical expenses are far too high. This is the result of *insufficient* freedom in the marketplace, not insufficient government meddling. A helicopter ride at the Grand Canyon cost something like $300 per person for an hour or so. This sets a basis for what choppers cost to operate profitably. Why should medical choppers necessarily cost so much more? Well, one reason is that Grand Canyon helicopters are *not* covered by insurance (either private or government), and thus they have to actualy charge what the market will bear. Medflights are going to get paid by *somebody* no matter what, so they can charge whatever the hell they like.
No sympathy whatsoever. Had the same thing happen to me (without the tree). Unemployed and uninsured. Did they turn me out into the street? Nope. Did I get “free” treatment that somehow makes everybody else’s premiums go up? Nope. I got a big f–king bill. And I paid it. Why should my problem be everybody else’s? By that same token why should I have to pay for someone else’s problem? It’s THEIR problem just as MY problem was MY problem. Personal responsiblity and self-respect. Two increasingly alien concepts to many. And I agree, the .gov and many of their regulations are a large part of the high cost problem.
“Why should my problem be everybody else’s?”
I tried that line the other day on a liberal blog I frequent. The counter-argument presented such gems as “Goods are only acquired by conquest”, “If we didn’t have taxes, people would say ‘My money is mine’ and refuse to pay up” and “You have a moral duty to fix a social problem”. I was also called a thug and accused of theft, communism, and using racist slurs (the word in question was “gypped”, and was not used in a race context).
Brianna: Yeah, that kind of entitlement “everybody should support my lazy ass” mentality makes me want to break things. Idiots mostly.