02 March 2013

Access to health care

Our society is insane.

The surgeons there said that he was sure to die if they did not intervene, and that they should schedule a surgery within the coming weeks.

Fortunately for him (or so he thought) he was released from prison one week later. When he returned for his pre-op visit, though, he was told that since he'd been released from prison, he no longer had insurance to cover the operation.

He asked what he should do. The told him to figure out how to get insurance.

....

After he was arrested, he wrote a note to the judge saying that he needed to get back into prison for a year, to get an operation. He told me the judge said “I'll give you 14 months, go get your surgery.”

What's even more insane is that the debate in this country is essentially between people who hold that no one should die from easily corrected conditions and people who hold that the way to prevent absurd stories like this one is to stop caring for the health of people who have been imprisoned.

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