Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones

"It's only fun till someone gets hurt!"
We all remember those nagging, knee-pad wielding parents who chased us down the driveway shouting safety instructions and fastening emergency bracelets to our wrists. As a child, I remember waiting until my house was no longer in view before stashing my helmet and elbow pads into the neighbor's bushes and then roller blading down to the park to join my friends in some sort of parentally unsanctioned activity. Better to live and pay the price than feel like a porcelain doll.
But perhaps this Friday I crossed the line between living life to its fullest and plain recklessness. I was out in Oakland with some friends, celebrating our start to a promising labor day weekend. Leaving the pub and sailing down 20th on a bit of steel and two wheels, I let myself go a bit faster than I perhaps should have. As I rounded the corner onto Broadway, a portly fellow ran into the street to hail an approaching cab.. and dead center into my front wheel. The asphalt kissed my right arm, and the impact with the ground caused my key chain to break open, spraying keys all over the street. My arm was bleeding, but I seemed okay; more concerned about picking up my keys and getting out of the middle of the street. The embarrassed pedestrian apologized and then jumped into his cab, uninjured. We continued onto the Bart train, and it was a good twenty minutes before I noticed my other hand was throbbing. I thought it best to retire for the night and sleep off the injury. But as I awoke in the morning and tried to bend my fingers down into my now very swollen palm, I realized there was a very serious problem.
Now I, like many millions of Americans, do not have health insurance. Either jobs I've worked don't offer it, or, as is the case now, I only work part-time because I'm a student. I'm not a bum, I'm a hardworking person who always pays my taxes. And do I just happen to have an extra $200 or so of disposable income at the end of each month for a crappy private plan? (And if I did, I would be better off putting it in a private savings to pay my medical bills than giving it over to a profit margin obsessed company).
And so, what are people like me supposed to do when we get injured? Just accept the fact that one second of bad luck, one accident, will result in a $10,000 hospital bill, that I will have to endure harassing phone calls from bill collectors for a number of years until I pay it off, or declare bankruptcy? I don't fucking think so.
Now I have some not-so-fond memories of Cook County Hospital in Chicago. There was a certain someone who I had to take there a few years back, and his broken limb involved a 12 hour wait in the ER, in which i got into a fight with a bum for stealing my coffee mug. I was not looking forward to County. So my roommate helped me pack a bag full of books, food, enough to get by for a 24 hour camp out, and we headed over to Alameda County Hospital.
As we pulled up, I expected to see a dingy burnt out looking building teaming with homeless people. But this is California, and the county hospital I went to looked as professional and unassuming as a normal ER. I signed in at the desk, and in less than 5 minutes, I was getting registered in the queue. Within two hours they had me transfered to a hospital bed, where I came into contact with one friendly nurse after another, giving me ice, water, you name it. Over in X-ray, my fears were confirmed: I had broken a bone in my hand, a lovely spiral fracture that would sentence me to 6 weeks in a hard cast.
Back in my hospital bed and waiting for my splint, I became aware of the two others i was sharing a room with. The one, homeless, alcoholic, around sixty, drunk and disorientated. The other, the same, except a women and with a head injury she doesn't recollect getting. She says she has a boyfriend. Then she changes the story. Now she has a husband. These two are regulars here, the nurses are on familiar terms with them. They lie to the nurses, saying they don't drink, they just want something for the pain. They'll be back again. The one tries to get up and pees all over the floor. It's a mess. It stinks. Those poor nurses.
After a total of four hours, I declare myself poor to financial services, and leave without paying anything.
I just went beck to have my cast put on today. The queue was long, and the wait longer. It was six hours before I was finally put in a cast. The doctors were good, knowledgeable, hardworking, horribly understaffed. The doctor that saw me said he usually administers 50 or more patients a day. I heard many patients cussing at the doctors. One guy told the doctor to 'shut the fuck up' because the doctor told him he would have to walk with a cane until his foot healed. I've often heard from friends that work in social services that the ones that are the worst off are also usually also the most ungrateful when they are given help.

Now, we all know that a very historical event is about to go down in regards to health care. Here we have a nation that can only seem to agree on the fact that everyone disagrees. We have a President grasping at the threads of an unraveling garment. Even if this Health care reform does go through, with the need for so much compromise, it will be nowhere near as strong and well organized as Canada's glorious system. There is far too much greed in America to ever have honest, uncorrupted social services, and America is too vast a country to run anything efficiently. In my travels, small countries, such as England, Japan, and New Zealand, have excellent National Health care because those countries are manageable. If my experiences this past week have shown me anything, it is that this country is a huge mess.
So what if Obama's free health care does wind up to be just like County Hospital? Yes, the doctors are over worked. Yes, you have to wait longer and that can be frustrating. Or you might have to endure rooming with a derelict. But are the doctors just as good? Yes. Did they accomplish the job of healing you? Of course.
But most important of all, I would still rather endure a 12hour wait and get it over with than worry every day of my life about how I would afford it. If I didn't have to work a job I hated just because I needed the health coverage that employer provided. Imagine the freedom if we all didn't have to worry any more...