So. She waits six days before finally dragging herself to an urgent care clinic, but the wait is so long and she feels like shit on a stick so she goes back home. Eventually ends up in ICU with pneumonia, and, as it ends up, tested positive for H1N1. By then the infection had gone too far, her organs started failing, and after a week in the hospital she died this morning, leaving a teenage daughter and a husband who don’t know what hit them.
As tragic as this story really is, the real tragedy is that she waited six days to seek medical care after running a high fever, and then failed to see it through because the wait was too long. I'm all for blaming a terrible health care system for failing to help enough people, but after running a fever for four days she should have hit the emergency room and sat there like everyone else with no insurance and waited all day to get seen. She was presumably a California resident, as she had just come back from Disneyland, so at least there might have been Medi-Cal.
While the system sucks, there was a way for her to get care. The bills could have been negotiated. Doctors and hospitals are not monoliths that have no room for this sort of negotiating. This woman and her husband do bear some responsibility in this case.
That said, an option in place for her to go be part of a government-run system that covers people like her would have been better. For her to forego medical care because she had no money was stupid and short-sighted. When you're that sick, you get help. If your leg is broken you go to the hospital and get a cast and perhaps surgery.
If we're going to argue for the public option in the healthcare insurance reform bill, then let's use strong cases. This is not one of them.
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