No question there. It just seems to me that even sven is attempting to couch this incident in the worst possible terms related to the clinic/doctor, and in the best possible terms related to her friend and his employer. In other words, the information filters are working overtime, and her refusal and/or inability to provide additional details that would give us more grist for the mill seems … interesting.
I find it interesting that you accuse me of having problems with “shifting the goal posts” or “having trouble with my reading comprehension” when if you look at my posts in this thread, I have been talking about non-life threatening situations requiring medical care. It goes all the way back to post #54 when " made it clear I was talking about “ambulatory” patients, which I clarified as “Walk in/walk out cases” in post 63 and further amended as people with “non-life threatening conditions” in post 101, all before you addressed any comment to me. I have stayed consistent with this point of view throughout this entire thread. So, which one of us is moving the goalposts, or at the very least, not reading for comprehension, hmm?
But one can be ambulatory and have a non-life threatening condition and still be classified as “urgent,” as DoctorJ points out. Urgent means needing relatively fast, but not necessarily immediate life-saing attention, if i understand him correctly.
And there’s still considerable difference between talking about a badly cut hand that needs rapid attention, on the one hand, and talking about “bunions” and requests for routine check-ups on the other. Do you still honestly believe that your crap about bunions and checkups have anything to do with all this?
Uh-huh. And a clinic is perfectly within it’s rights to tell someone in that condition that they are not the appropriate venue for treatment, to go to the ER or where ever.
Yes, because it’s all the result of the attitude that you’re displaying that Doctors are always on call. If someone’s dying, any doctor in the area should help. Other than that, there are appropriate places to go for any type of treatment needed, one should utilize them.
The clinic never told them that. The clinic said “we don’t take cash.” Not the same thing.
Draw all the tenuous connections you like between my position and morons who expect checkups at baseball games. You’re deluded if you think they’re the same thing, or that my position is somehow responsible for their stupidity.
Yeah, like the name of the clinic. Hell, I’ll call them up on my dime and get somebody to tell me the scoop on why they won’t treat near amputees off the street who want to pay cash.
Man, are you dense. I was pointing out how flawed the system was (especially since this happened in CA, but YOU FAIL TO SEE THE SCOPE OF OUR PROBLEM), and instead, you go all race card on me. I don’t care what state you’re living in, your state issues DOES NOT COMPARE to California’s.
But for shits and grins, wanna compare?
Googled: Texas hospitals closing
Googled: California hospitals closing
And if you want to call bullshit or an article crap (and expect some sort of credibility), at least back it up with a link, ya dolt. If you feel I need an education on the subject, then do more than just kneejerk.
But, you are definitely the one in need of an education.
To sum things up, we get less return on our tax dollars than Texas does, we pay state taxes, and we are still running a deficit when it comes to healthcare in California, therefore you see why Google had better quality of hits in CA, not TX.
With the cumulative issues at hand for California (the Goldless State), all one can do is have a sense of humor…hence, my initial joke, and now (at least) I can understand why it went over your head. That will be the ONLY thing that I will apologize for. As for the Little Mexico comment, that was you talking…not me…ya :wally
sven, the problem here is the employer, not the medicos. It would have been a great post if it was aimed at the “hippy holdover” who doesn’t know the location of the nearest ER that will take his insurance, doesn’t have workman’s comp for his employees (or does he? I’m still unclear on that) and worst of all, tells someone who’s bleeding to drive himself to get treatment. Which you should never do! If he really was bleeding that badly, he could have started going into shock. And even if he wasn’t, how well could he steer with an injured hand?
You really, really should calm down and think things through before you Pit.
Weirddave, how do all these people know that your dad’s an MD? Does he wear a stethoscope in his ears everywhere he goes, like Leslie Neilsen in Airplane!?
It’d be one thing if he was at a movie, someone had a heart attack, and their companion yelled “Is there a doctor in the house?” But if he’s on vacation or just hanging out, perhaps he just shouldn’t tell people what he does for a living.
My uncle is also a doctor, and years ago, he set his own policy of refusing to do diagnoses outside of his office. I don’t know if it was an urban legend he heard, about doctors getting sued because their on-the-spot diagnoses or treatments were later called into question, but lawyers aren’t called ambulance-chasers for no reason. Usually, his response is, “Well, I’m ear-nose-and-throat; bunions aren’t my specialty.” Or, “The first-aid station is near the entrance.” This has the added effect of making people (correctly, IMO) feel pretty stupid for thinking that all doctors are gods who can fix anything, anywhere, at any time.
I mean, not that he’s completely heartless. If someone was having a heart attack, I’m sure he’d respond…although you don’t need a medical degree to know CPR, and heart attack victims have been saved by people with no credentials. But if it’s not a life-threatening situation, an MD is entirely within his rights to simply say "No."
Actually, we don’t know what the clinic told him.
sven hasn’t seen the wound yet. This means that sven wasn’t there. So we are not being asked to take sven’s word for what happened (which I would probably be willing to do), but we are being asked to take the word of a friend of sven, which I am not willing to do.
I’d like to know more about a ‘communally owned food related business’ that operates on a cash only basis, and pays its employees out of the till rather than via paycheck, a process we in the business call “under the table”.
If this is the case, I find it ass blowing hilarious that your friend would dare to open his mouth about the State of American Healthcare Today when he and apparently his boss aren’t paying state and federal taxes from their paychecks.
if i’m wrong, let me know.
thanks
Well, I for one am shocked, shocked, at the idea that even sven would choose to present only the part of the story that furthered her viewpoint.
I just watched a grizzly take a massive crap in the trees behind my house.
Look Yeticus Rex, I am not here to start a name calling contest. My apologies if I misunderstood your comment. The Minute Man thing may have made me super-sensitive. However, I stand by my statement that illegals are not the reason our hospitals are collapsing.
In your cites alone you will find that CA spends 5.1 billion on the uninsured, and of that it is estimated that 500 million is from treating illegals. Even without the illegals, the cost of treating uninsured is crippling our medical system. Not that the illegals are helping, but I do get tired of the “it’s everyone but us” blame game.
Something must be done about the medical system in this country, in all states, not just the ones that have large immigrant populations.
Side note: Actually, they’re probably violating their merchant agreement if they require a minimum purchase amount to use a Visa or MasterCard, so I’d say yes.
Actually I am aware of that, but wasn’t sure it applied when using the card as a debit card.
Where on earth did you get the idea that the business “operates on a cash only basis” and “pays its employees out of the till rather than via paycheck”, or that “he and apparently his boss aren’t paying state and federal taxes from their paychecks”? None of those claims appear any of sven’s posts.
It appears that, in order to avoid reporting the accident and seeing his worker’s comp rates climb, the owner offered machete-coconut guy a wad of cash from the till and sent him across the street to the clinic to get sewn up. This, AFAIK, is illegal, since it’s trying to cover up a workplace injury, but he seems to have felt that as long as sven’s friend was taken care of at the store’s expense no harm would be done (although I wonder how his bookkeeping would have accounted for the missing register cash).
People do sometimes pay for things in cash rather than via insurance, usually in a minor car scrape where the guilty party doesn’t want to see their premiums raised. I personally know of someone who pays for certain medication with cash because she doesn’t want another party to know about it. The problem with Mr. Hippie’s action is that it’s specifically against laws designed to protect the workplace.
[BTW, although sven hasn’t identified the clinic or the workplace, I have a strong suspicion that I know the latter concern (rhymes with “Rude Grin”). If I’m right, it’s a well-known Santa Cruz business and I’d be amazed if it tried to escape the notice of the IRS or the California Franchise Tax Board].
I still don’t understand how there was enough cash to pay for the stitch-up job, but not enough for pain meds. One would think that hippie-man would want to keep machete-boy as happy as possible so that he doesn’t report the incident.
First of all, I said “tell me if Im’ wrong.” I’d be thrilled to have Even Sven give the whole story at once for once rather than a piece at a time.
Here’s the quote from sven that let me know the business is not entirely ON THE LEVEL
‘communally owned’? What does that mean exactly? What is ‘food related’ and if people are losing extremeties at a business, shouldn’t it be investigated by OSHA or some such?
I’ve worked for big corps and little tiny restaurants, and I’ve never had someone grab “big wads of cash” from the company till to cover an accident.
So i’ll ask this way:
Sven, is he paying taxes out of a paycheck at this job?
Ok, I’ll do the same then…for me, it’s not the Minute Man thing, it’s California public services that are hemorraging and everyone is in a circle, pointing at someone else that they are the blame. The illegal immigrant segment is easy to blame, but I see them as a symptom to Mexico’s own economic policies (or lack of). It’s not just a healthcare issue for illegals, but it’s also money being sent back to Mexico (Mexico’s 2nd highest annual income, behind tourism). Mexico’s remittances from the U.S. It’s not just about healthcare for the uninsured, it’s also about money (a good deal of it not being reported or taxed) not being spent here to generate more state revenue to support the entire population. That’s a double or even a triple whammy not just for our state, but for the U.S. as a whole. It’s not a loss of millions for California, but BILLIONS. The question is…will this level off anytime soon if at all and will it be too late?
As an employer who does everything above table, this is quite frustrating and then to go and explain to my own employees why health care costs go up and services go down is something I quite loathe. I have to do it again this very month since our renewal period is May 1st. I hate this part of the job, because I am the one who ends up deducting more from their checks (and also paying more for the company’s share) even though they have gotten merit raises…essentially, they are being stagnated and there is little I can do about it since my company itself has reimbursement levels frozen for years now from the CA Dept. of Social Services. (We provide services to the dev. disabled.) I follow the employment and tax laws as well as Worker’s Comp provisions, and I’m looking at a bleak picture for at least another 3 years. Once I was optimistic, but I’m not too sure about it now…hopefully we will be able to survive it.
Oh, well…I still have my humor, so please don’t take that away from me.
Well maybe if Mister Hippie Holdover Guy had followed the laws in the first place, he wouldn’t be this mess. And don’t give me that shit that they’re like “family.” Families don’t put family members’ health at risk because they’re afraid of losing money. What if your friend lost his finger over this, and couldn’t work at all? Oh, but Mr Employer doesn’t want to go bankrupt and everyone loses their jobs! BTW, if this gets out, he’ll be losing his business sooner than he thinks. You’re complaining about the state of health care in America, but fact is, we have laws in place that SHOULD have protected your friend in the first place, but his boss is too damned stupid and cheap to follow them.
If someone gets seriously hurt, like your friend, his employer has an obligation to file a claim. If that will put him out of business, then maybe he fucking NEEDS to be out of business.
Fuck, I wasn’t there, I don’t work there, and I only have secondhand knowledge overheard at drunken parties about the company involved (a small catering firm) so I guess I shouldn’t be talking about it.
But I don’t really think it really matters in regards to the thing that pisses me off- that my friend was turned away from an open working doctor becuase he did not have the perferred negotiable instrument on him, and that I live in a country where they ask if you’ve got plastic before they stitch up your severed arteries.