If take a special needs child/adult to the emergency room more than once you learn this right off the bat.

Normal stuff fits into the system's flow of work and there's little worry/possibility of harm. Otherwise not so much.

Suggest if possible only have surgery during the normal work week and always have a second opinion if time permits.

Don't hesitate to request a transfer to another hospital if a specialist resides there and your current location is having troubles w/your loved one. 1 hour transferring will result in much better care. (It's what the staff is used to handling that is key.)

Pass your experiences on to others in the same boat. Their loved one can benefit from your bad experiences.

Regarding the air traffic controllers, you're not getting the whole story. In a lot of cases, they schedule themselves that way deliberately, because by arranging their work hours in a certain way, a substantial number of those hours become overtime hours under their work rules. If someone came in and said, "okay, we're going to schedule you guys eight hours a day, five days a week, with regular days off", the union would scream to high heaven. Here's a related article, although it's kind of light on details -- I'll try to find something more relevant.

Air traffic controllers have a difficult job, no doubt about that. But they also, out of self-interest, have a long history of doing things that make their job more difficult than it needs to be.

I agree that the load on interns is just not right. I almost had an intern deliver my first child at the end of a long shift.

They hadn't had time to check on me to realize that I was transitioning. It was time to push and they hadn't called my doctor - and my doctor lived out of town. I didn't know OBs could live out of town. They pulled in the harried-looking intern. Although the nurses were freeking out, he looked rather relieved when I refused to push.

20 years ago it cost $3,000 for the doctor and $5,000 for the room for 24 hours. There was no pain medication or even an IV. I saw the nurses less than an hour (except for the paperwork to get paid) and the doctor only 20 minutes.

I was told that I made a mistake and shouldn't have had the baby at 7:00am. Thankfully, there weren't any complications. It just seems immoral to have a hospital so short-staffed at night. It's not fair to the doctors, nurses, and interns and it's certainly not fair to the patients.

I felt totally ripped off because I was left hooked up to monitors so I couldn't even get up to take care of my needs. It's ironic that I couldn't go to the restroom for 10 hours because of short-staffing while it's cruel to have my students wait 45 minutes.

There has got to be a better way. I'd be willing to pay more for better care. I know that this group hates my idea but what I would like to see is universal healthcare so everyone has a safety net and letting this free the market to we could pay a fair price for the services that we desire. If we didn't have to pay for all the uninsured people at a hospital perhaps I could pay a doctor $300-500 dollars per hour to hang out with me while I was in labor. It would have been cheaper for me and less stressful for the doc. If I could have paid each nurse $100 dollars per hour I would have gotten much better care and even paying $1,000 for the hospital room just in case I needed something wouldn't have been too crazy. What I paid for and what I got - now That is crazy. We could even add a cost of living bump and we would still come out ahead.

I agree completely with Cousin Dave. It is even visible in this article.
" At the time, about 4 percent of controllers were being assigned "a six-day constant schedule," the study said, but the share of controllers who had actually worked a six-day schedule in their previous work week was 15 percent."

So 4% of the problem is with the FAA scheduling the rest is with the controllers gaining the system for overtime.

Damn that's crazy.

If only they had a union to protect them from these dangerous labor practices.

Um,nurses. We actually do more than clean up shit and fluff pillows. Hospitals deliberately keep us under-staffed in order to increase profits. And BTW the only reason people are in ICUs is for the advanced level of nursing care. We get a new set of baby docs every month. The care we provide and the judgements we make are the only reason people ever survive a critical illness. And we work long hours, endless night shifts, and lots of overtime. We often have to be awake during the day, too, in order to care for our children. And we are not talking about a couple of tough years when we are young,this is how we survive for the entire length of our careers. And this is why we get sicker and die younger than our physician friends. And another BTW, the mistakes we make are the most dangerous. Nurses have physicians' backs when they write an order that contains a mistake or an error in judgement. Unfortunately, almost nothing stands between a nurse, her patient, and a big mistake. We are also not the ones responsible for stupid rules such as needing a doctor's order to give a patient the cough drop he asks for, which results in endless unnecessary and infuriating pages.

"I know that this group hates my idea but what I would like to see is universal healthcare so everyone has a safety net and letting this free the market to we could pay a fair price for the services that we desire. If we didn't have to pay for all the uninsured people at a hospital perhaps I could pay a doctor $300-500 dollars per hour to hang out with me while I was in labor. It would have been cheaper for me and less stressful for the doc. If I could have paid each nurse $100 dollars per hour I would have gotten much better care and even paying $1,000 for the hospital room just in case I needed something wouldn't have been too crazy. What I paid for and what I got - now That is crazy. We could even add a cost of living bump and we would still come out ahead."

Well, perhaps you've seen it - but here's your solution. It's not gonna happen so long as the public wants "government" to give them something for "free". Most don't even bother to expalin what they mean when they say, "universal".

I figure universal healthcare will be pretty bad but perhaps not any worse than it is right now and if we can get treatment for "real prices" we might save a lot of money. Of course, this is coming from someone who paid $30,000 in addition to paying for insurance for the last 4 out of 6 years.

Even paying through the nose and having insurance hasn't always bought me good care.

"If only they had a union to protect them from these dangerous labor practices."

If you're talking about the air traffic controllers, they have a union. And the union is part of the problem.

Jen - when you say, "universal healthcare", what do you mean?

Universal healthcare to me is when everyone is covered. There has been talk about disallowing anyone from circumventing programs do that they can't get extra care if they would like to.

I would like to see everyone with a right to healthcare. Of course, there would have to be some kind of rationing or it would be too expensive. For instance, there might be wait times for non life-threatening illnesses and there might be cut-offs - for instance, not covering acne, diaper rash, or varicose veins unless there were complicating factors.

We could save a lot of healthcare costs by providing birth control, asthma inhalers, vaccines, and the like.

They might save money by using midwives and nurse practitioners.

Just like our socialized education, not everyone is satisfied with the services the government provides. If we want better service in education, we can hire tutors, pay for private school, or homeschool.

If we have socialized medicine, we can pay for extra services ourselves and I would think that they would be more reasonable because it would be strictly between the doctor and patient without any red tape or paperwork. I could say I want this test run and since I would be paying for it, the doctor would just do it I would think. I suffered with a parasitic infection for 5 months because I didn't meet my insurance guidelines for testing. The lab told me they couldn't run the test without a doctor's order. Right now, what we pay for medical services are jacked up because they build in the costs of indigent care which is usually more expensive because there is no preventative care.

I went to school with a girl that couldn't afford her $50 inhaler so she relied on the ER until she didn't make it in time and died of asthma. Her medical bills were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars because ya know, we don't believe in just giving away medicine to teenagers.

"I would like to see everyone with a right to healthcare. Of course, there would have to be some kind of rationing or it would be too expensive. "

There's your problem in a nutshell. Rationing is central planning. It does not respond to market conditions. It does not respond to demand, or to how much or how little of the rationed good is needed at a given time. There's always either too much or too little. And if the government is the provider, there will always be too little -- the incentives for the administering bureaucrats will always run in the direction of "save money", because government will always want that money for other things that it regards as more important.

Rationing is authoritarianism, and authoritarianism always begats more authoritarianism. Once bureaucrats and apparatachiks have had a taste of power over othe people's lives, there is no end to the lust. Rationing creates the need for more things to be rationed. More rationing creates the need for more laws, more enforcement, more control. The ordinary citizens must "sacrifice", in terms of their property, their rights, their human dignity. The need for the government to control everything is all-encompassing.

Rationing is corrupt. There is never been a rationing regime anywhere, any time, any place, that did not become rife with corruption. The sufficiently well connected will always be able to get extra, and to get higher quality. People without those connections will find themselves in a downward spiral. The good being rationed may be cheap in cost -- but if isn't available to you, the price doesn't matter. Rationing isn't determined by merit, but by tribal association. Rationing takes away the ability for people to arrange their own lives as they see fit. It infantalizes everyone. It strips the citizens of their human dignity.

A free market balances supply and demand, and it does so without any government intervention. That last bit is why the the people who desire to have power over others hate it.

"I would like to see everyone with a right to healthcare."

Grr. I see a problem with the definition of "rights" coming, but I'll let that one go by...

That raises so many questions and demonstrates so much naiveté it almost isn't worth acknowledging...

How many thousands of dollars' worth of resources paid for by other people should YOU be able to command? Helicopter? CAT scan & MRI on demand? Surgery, corrective and elective? Transplants? Interpreters for your language or impairment? How much recovery time with pay do you get, since we can't say it was your fault you were sick? How much time on a feeding tube, a la Ms. Schiavo?

What incentive do you offer doctors and technicians for providing their services?

We are already on the track to rationing via that horrible crap foisted on us by a Democrat Congress that couldn't even bother to read it.

"Sick? The clerk is not sick. Fill out this form. Have you filled out the form? Then the system is functioning perfectly. Please wait. No, you're not being denied care, it just isn't available right now. Please wait."

The ironic thing is, I could support a "right to health care" if it were truly a right that we're talking about; this would mean I have the right to: (1) buy whatever insurance I want and am willing to pay for, (2) see whatever doctor I want to see, and am willing to pay for, and (3) obtain whatever medicines or drugs I think I need, and am willing to pay for, all without government or private interference.

But that's not what Jen is talking about. What she's talking about is not a right, but a privilege: that of demanding that someone else provide me with a good or service, which I will not pay for. The fact that the privilege is "universal" does not make it any less of a privilege; as she states, rationing will be necessary, and once rationing kicks it, it's no longer universal.

"I would like to see everyone with a right to healthcare."

If it were a right, if a doctor refused to treat you for free, would he be in violation of your rights?

Of course, there would have to be some kind of rationing or it would be too expensive.

Once it's rationed, do you still have right to it?

Don't kid yourself - healthcare is rationed now. On an HMO, my doctor didn't run tests because he had incentives fur keeping costs down and penalties for providing extra care.

When I had my first child, I got substandard care because other women delivering had no prenatal care and thus were high risk.

Many doctors have refused to treat a cousin with a genetic anomaly.

Insurance companies force people to jump through hoops and deny or delay approval. So it is being rationed.

We will have to make tough decisions about how we want it rationed. I am willing to pay for my medical expenses but they are ridiculous because of insurance and rationing. We've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for often substandard care.

"Don't kid yourself - healthcare is rationed now. "

Oh, I know. Medicare, Medicaid, and indigent care have been driving the system in that direction for a long time, among other things. I guess what you're asking for is that, if we're going to have rationing, let's have a rationing regime that is rational. I get that. However, my contention is that there is no such thing. Read up on the history of WWII rationing boards if you want to see some of what can happen -- and that was at a time when there was a widespread sense of national emergency and patriotism, and most people were motiviated to play it straight. None of those things is true now.

"We will have to make tough decisions about how we want it rationed. I am willing to pay for my medical expenses but they are ridiculous because of insurance and rationing. We've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for often substandard care."

No doubt. It's a disaster that has taken decades and the efforts of a lot of people to bring about. Back in the early '80s, when I had my first full time job, medical insurance was such a small part of one's paycheck that nobody worried about. I recall one of my co-workers telling me that his was something like $25 per biweekly paycheck, for his family of four. IIRC, since I was single and had no kids, mine was completely paid for by the company. Most things were paid at 80%, but there was only a small deductible, about $200/year, and no co-pays. Mind you, a lot of advanced-technology things that we have now didn't exist then -- CAT scanners were just becoming widely available, and MRI was still experimental. But for basic care, the standards were the same or maybe even a bit better, and it didn't cost an arm and a leg like it does now.

I had some non-trivial surgery in 1985. A few years ago, I talked to a doctor in that same field, and I described what was done and asked him what would be different about that surgery today versus in 1985. The only thing he said he could think of was that we have better anesthetics now, although I didn't have any significant problems with the anesthetic I was administered back then. I told him what I had of the hospital billing (I still have some of the papers), and he estimated that the total cost for the equivalent surgery today would be about 20x the 1985 cost. There's been inflation since 1985, but not nearly that much.