My Health Dollars

I listened with sadness last week as my friend related the treatment of her mother in a country which promises universal health care for its people. We even pay extra health tax to make sure the public health care gets sufficient funding.

This started few days back when my friend's mother developed severe pain in her back that ran all the way down to her leg, immobilizing her. The visit to the emergency department at the hospital resulted in being prescribed painkiller and coming back home. My friend tried desperately over two/three days to get the family doctor to come home and visit her mother as their was no way she could get her mother to the surgery.

I don't know how but she ended up taking her mother back to the emergency where her mother was hospitalized in the corridor of the hospital because no other room was available. She spent three days with her mother still sleeping in the corridor because no room could be found. The crunch came when she returned in the morning to find her mother in a serious emotional state, complaining about how the nurses would not help her to get to the bathroom. After being given morphine to subsidize the pain, the mother was in no state to make her way to the bathroom alone. My friend helped her during the day, but at night there was no one to help, despite two nurses sitting at desk just two feet away.

My friend has brought her mother back home. I don't blame her. Why spend sleepless night worrying if her mother is taken care of or not.

But I would like to know that despite paying additional taxes why is there no service available especially to the elderly? My tax dollars which pay the salary of those nurses, do their work contract specify they are barred from helping an eighty year old to go to the bathroom.