http://www.gnn.com/article/site-to-help-nanny-who-saved-boy/980724
Without thinking about the danger, Alyson rushed down the hall, barefoot, through 400-degree flames to save Aden, who was trapped in his bedroom. He escaped unscathed, but Myatt was badly burned on her right arm, hand and especially her feet.
Myatt told local TV station WAVE, “It was like I was walking on goo ’cause all the skin. My feet were just burned off.”…
Myatt doesn’t have health insurance and isn’t sure how she will pay for the burn treatment she needs, which may include skin grafts on her feet.
Now Tonic wants to raise money for the woman it calls the real Super Nanny. The site has pledged $20,000 and is asking readers to chip in $10 each to help Myatt with her medical expenses.
6 Responses to “Site to Help Nanny Who Saved Boy”
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“Myatt doesn’t have health insurance and isn’t sure how she will pay for the burn treatment she needs…”
I find the notion that someone can be denied health care, just because they do not have the means to afford it, to be completely alien.
Huron –
That phenomenon doesn’t exist in the US either. It’s a myth – pure weapons-grade bolognium peddled by those who want to pay for everybody’s health care out of the public kitty (with the final say on who gets how much in their own grubby little hands).
No, she wonders how she will PAY for her health care. She is entitled to the initial burn treatment (ie, the one that will save her feet, in all likelihood a form of skin grafting) as an emergency room treatment. Which means that for this lifesaving heroine, we taxpayers get to pony up the money. In all honesty, she deserves it and more. Which is why a charitable fund is being set up on her behalf.
But please don’t concern-troll us. These are not the idiots you’re looking for.
Rick-
The vast majority of people in her situation, lacking insurance or the ability to pay for medical expenses, will not be so fortunate as to get a charitable fund to cover their medical expenses after the emergency room treatment.
Please do not call me a troll or an idiot, Sir, especially if your arguments are only going to reveal you as the fool.
> The vast majority of people in her situation, lacking insurance or the ability to pay for medical expenses, will not be so fortunate as to get a charitable fund to cover their medical expenses after the emergency room treatment.
So maybe they should get *jobs.*
As pointed out, anyone with emergency medical needs will get them taken care of. But why should they not also get a bill?
If the concern is that the bill is too high, then try to think about the situation the way an engineer would, not the way a politician would.
Politician: “This bill is too high. I need to find a way to get other people to pay it for me.”
Engineer: “This bill is too high. I need to find a way to make it less expensive.”
There are any number of good ways to vastly lower the cost of healthcare. My own preference, for when I gain dictatorial powers, is this:
1) Ban all forms of government funded “universal healthcare” outside of emergency services and FEMA-type systems.
2) Ban all forms of private health insurance.
1+2 = the person needing the care gets to pay… and they get to see *exactly* how expensive their care is (something people don’t see when someone else pays the bills)
Plus…
3) Tort reform in the form of not only “loser pays,” but “losing lawyer pays 50% of the winners legal bills.”
That would assure that lawyers would no longer take any and every case no matter how frivolous in the knowledge that, worst case, they just won’t get paid much.
Put all those together and the cost of health care would plummet. Doctors would not need to pay vast sums for malpractice insurance; the open nature of the costs would assure that competition would thrive. For those with serious, truly expensive conditions, they can apply for a “scholarship” or a loan from private institutions. If this is good enough for expensive items like houses, cars and college educations, then surely it’ll be good enough for healthcare.
And allow people to sell their organs once dead.
I see my point sailed way overhead, Huron. It was pretty simple I thought – In any circumstances, the woman would recieve the medical CARE she required. She is simply without medical INSURANCE. A does not equal B, and attempting to square that circle are well-deserving of our ridicule. In order drop costs on a commodity (health care) with a near-unlimited demand (as population ages and increases in number), the only way to do it successfully is to increase supply. Period, dot, stop. More doctors, more medicines, more devices.
Nothing I’ve seen from your suggestions will accomplish that. In fact, it will do quite the opposite, as more and more doctors refuse to take on new patients whose only “insurance” comes from Uncle Sam. Fewer pharma companies do the research necessary to create new vital drugs, due to government-mandated slashing of their profit margins (Why is it that every fall we hear about shortages of flu vaccines because yet another supplier left the market, while meds for somewhat spurious maladies like acid-reflux disease are available year-round at the drop of a hat?). And medical device makers have been saying for months that command-economy reforms to health insurance will be the death knell of improvements in their work.
What we need, even more than the fixes Scott pointed out, is an increase in the supply of medical professionals. There is no good reason that the AMA should be telling medical schools how many new applicants they’ll be able to accept each year – we should make it more like all other professions, where if you can pass the tests then you’re in. We should be stripping out the “mickey mouse” BS course requirements at the undergrad level (core sciences yes, fluffy electives no) to streamline the training process – get the students in, get them trained fast, get them a certificate and get them out in the field. We should be screening current nurses for aptitude to make it as GP doctors, to fill in the gaps now while the aforementioned crash programs spool up. And much as I’m generally opposed to government loan guarantees, the program that funds tuition for doctors (who are often then sent to rural areas where there aren’t any nearby medical personnel) should be expanded in both numbers and professions (not just would-be MDs, but also pharma researchers and nurses) for a minimum of 10 years – probably closer to 20, while we get the Boomer Bottleneck in our population through retirement.
We are staring down the barrel of a gun when it comes to Boomer retirement, and not just in pensions/social security/etc. We have no idea how big the problem really is – and a massive expansion of government-funded health care (think VA more than NHS, but even so) is make matters worse instead of better.
> In order drop costs on a commodity (health care) with a near-unlimited demand (as population ages and increases in number), the only way to do it successfully is to increase supply.
There are two sides to Supply and Demand. If paying for medical care was the direct responsibility of those recieving the medical care… the Demand side would go do.
There were times when I had really good insurance and I’d go to the doc because I had the flu. And why not? It was, essentially, free. They couldn’t do anything, of course. And during those times when I didn’t have good health insurance and I wouldn;t go to the doc for a broken bone, if I could set it myself.
Making health care “free” means that those receiving it do not give a damn what it actually costs.
> What we need… is an increase in the supply of medical professionals.
Solution: unionize every last doctor in the US. And, as a union, have them refuse to provide any medical care whatsoever to lawyers, unless that lawyer signs an agreement to never again provide any assistance, paid or otherwise, to a malpractice lawsuit.