*”SOL” is an acronym. If you don’t know what it stands for, you can look it up.
From the Hudson Reporter:
After being diagnosed with a medical condition that threatens her life, a Union City woman was forced to spend two critical months searching for a doctor willing to help her.
Peggy Albedhady, 47, learned she had a 6-millimeter brain aneurysm, an abnormal bulging of an artery in her brain, last November. She said that since then, she has been discharged too early from two prominent area hospitals and denied appointments with dozens of doctors.
The reason for so many rejections, she said, is her insurance: Medicaid.
Medicaid, a state and federally funded program, provides healthcare coverage for disabled individuals and people with little to no income.
“I don’t have a lot of money,” she said last week. “Does that give me the right to die?”
That’s what I’d call a rhetorical question. The answer is obvious, isn’t it?
Dying is cheap, doesn’t demand much of bureacracies, and no one has to worry about you filing a complaint in regard to the lack of follow-up care – or its quality.
When she collapsed on the way to the bathroom, her daughter told her it was time to go to the hospital. They went to Hoboken University Medical Center’s emergency room, but there was a very long wait, said Albedhady, so her daughter suggested they go somewhere else. They decided to go to a hospital with a great reputation, so they went to Hackensack University Medical Center.
Albedhady was admitted to the hospital. Tests revealed she had a brain aneurysm, as well as Hepatitis A and B. She was scheduled for further testing, but five days later, she said, she was abruptly discharged without the tests or an explanation.
“[They] discharged me like I can’t describe it,” said Albedhady. “Like you got tired of your animal, you got tired of your pet, and you just throw it out in the street.”
Albedhady’s description of the treatment of pets is somewhat different than some views we’ve discussed on the blog recently. Peter Baume, Dr. Gifford-Jones, and Thaddeus Mason Pope all recently embraced the idea that humans would benefit from the “kindness” we humans show our pets.
Albehady’s experienced some of the “kindness” firsthand and doesn’t seem to think much of it.
To be fair, the article says that there are medical professionals – including specialists – who will take Medicaid patients where Albedhady lives. It would be nice to think that the hospitals who threw her out gave her a list of them, but they didn’t. Apparently, they don’t think it’s their job to make locating the appropriate physician any easier for a patient with a critical condition. When she was finally able to locate an appropriate specialist, the only opening to see her was months away. That will be a relief to her – if she lives that long.
There are a lot of people out there who have concerns about limits to care under plans to get something close to universal health coverage in this country. Some of those concerns may even be justified.
But it’s hard to imagine a system in which Peggy Albedhady would fare worse than the one that she’s in right now. –Stephen Drake
