American is broken. It takes $0.86 to make, but then...Ok.... Here's the breakdown:
1. Uninsured person has an ingrown toenail.
2. Uninsured person calls 911 to take them to the emergency room at 2 am because of 10/10 pain from ingrown toenail that has been bothering them for three months, but they finally ended their Netflix binge, and now what are they supposed to do to entertain themselves, and because of 10/10 pain, they can't possibly drive to the ER themselves, right?
3. Uninsured person arrives at ER for three month old ingrown toenail and asks ER nurse for a sandwich, a warm blanket, a place to charge their cell phone, and pain medication for the 10/10 pain for which they had to take the ambulance.
3a. Because of EMTALA laws, the ER is required by law to ensure the patient is stable.
4. ER physician, who deals with a frivolously litigious clients on a regular basis and has to pay extra for malpractice INSURANCE, has to order a CBC, CMP, lactic acid, do an EKG, and orders a CT scan to make sure there's no underlying osteomyelitis.
5. Uninsured person actually only has an ingrown toe nail, eats the sandwich, complains they didn't get a warm blanket (even though they did), and asks the hospital for a taxi voucher to get home, because they can't take an ambulance back.
6. Uninsured person is charged $3,000 for the lab work, the needle stick, the CT, the blanket, the sandwich, the nurses time, the doctors time, the ambulance drivers time, the room, the radiologists time, the rad techs time...etc.
7. Uninsured person can't pay the $3,000 and opts to allow the charge to go on their credit report because, really, they don't care that much.
8. The hospital absorbs the cost of aforementioned items.
9. The hospital, in order to stay open, has to increase costs of items like a bag of saline, (because that's not the only uninsured person they treated today, someone earlier was having a heart attack but was uninsured and they ended up in the CVICU with quadruple bypass racking up $60,000 in non-recoupable hospital expenses).
10. Insurance companies freak out that a $0.86 bag of saline is now costing them $3.00.
11. Insurance companies increase the cost of premiums to offset the extra $2.14 per bag of saline (average 3,000 bags of saline a day for a small hospital...that's a difference of $6420 A DAY JUST FOR SALINE...btw I pulled these numbers out of my rectum).
12. Insured people freak out that their premiums have increased to cover a yearly insurance hike of $2,343,300 for saline.
13. Insured people complain about the cost of insurance.
14. Que the federal government. They start asking "Why are all these uninsured people walking around?" The federal government spends a TON of money making sure everyone is insured.
15. Now the federal government is out a bunch of money, making sure everyone is insured. The federal government has to recoup THAT money, because God knows, Congress can't deal with the budget they've GOT, can you imagine if we CUT FUNDS!?!?!
16. The federal government has to balance the budget, so we stop funding public colleges.
17. To go go medical school, you have to attend college. But the federal government has cut funding to medical schools across the country, making the programs that Are open more and more competitive and expensive.
18. Hopeful almost doctor (who is a poor college student and, ironically enough, probably uninsured), takes out a MOUNTAIN of student loan debt to pay for the private college they got into because the public schools are too full to accommodate their education.
19. Almost doctor graduates, starts working in an ER, sees an uninsured patient with an ingrown toenail, doesn't get paid by the patient (they're uninsured), doesn't get paid by the hospital (the hospital is reimbursed by the federal government based 30% on patient satisfaction and the uninsured toenail person didn't get a warm blanket, and are therefor dissatisfied), and still has a mountain of student loan debt to pay.
21. ER doctor is swimming in debt, feels depressed. ER doctor gets a prescription for prozac and is hugely overcharged by the pharmacy because his insurance company doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, which they determine his depression is. He pays for the prozac, pays his health insurance, and pays his malpractice insurance to show up again tonight in the ER to treat a three month old ingrown toenail.
22. Jesus comes back, no one needs insurance, everyone is happy. Except Satan. Who is burning in Hell.
23. The moral of the story is, Jesus lives, trust Him, and do what he says. #goandmake
