We joke but this literally happens sometimes. Co-worker when he was in California witnessed an ambulance drive off and leave a person sitting in a pull of his own blood on the street because he didn’t have insurance.
One of the propaganda lies of the wealthy physicians who control the American Medical Association was neatly exposed by Congressman Andrew Biemiller of Wisconsin on July 13, 1950 (Congressional Record, page 10117):
There is the slander campaign against national‐health insurance which calls it socialized medicine despite the fact that the AMA well knows it is not socialized medicine at all. Part of this campaign is the attempt to use the completely discredited alleged quotation from Lenin that “socialized medicine is the keystone of the arch of the Socialist state.” The AMA has been called upon to either document or stop using that quotation, many, many times. Its officials have admitted that the quotation cannot be documented. Experts at both the Library of Congress and the University of Chicago have declared there is no such statement in the known works of Lenin. Yet the quotation continues to be used in published material, in public speeches, and in political assaults. The use of such falsehoods is typical of the AMA approach to issues of public health, and they can no longer be defended on the lame grounds of ignorance of the truth. They are willful perversions of the truth. (Italics are mine.—M.K.)
Isn’t there something monstrous about the idea that men of power and wealth will try to block much‐needed health insurance for the poor by dangling the scarecrow of a phoney Lenin quotation? And even if Lenin had said this, what would be its relevance forty or forty‐five years later? Must millions of Americans be barred forever from adequate medical care because of something Lenin wrote? How crazy can we become?
US physicians like the for-profit insurance system because they are paid 2x or more than in single payer systems. For example, I know Canadian physicians who doubled their pay upon moving to the USA. It is a bribe by insurance companies for doctors to be apathetic towards capitalist suffering.
To make it more absurd, the person who has insurance and funds for access to ambulance and paramedic services also need to be conscious to request the insurance and assistance.
At first I was like “Oh, well a DNR is not that crazy a thing to hav-oh.” I would probably take my chances with bleeding out too.
