Since childhood, I have suffered from debilitating migraines. I have generally been able to avoid going to hospitals for my condition, particularly in the U.S., until a year ago. In 2013 I was hit by a car, and a long-term effect of the accident has been an increase in the severity of my already extreme migraines.
One day in 2014, I found myself suddenly unable to do anything except lie in bed, screaming and vomiting non-stop from pain. After a number of hours of this, my partner and mother decided to rush me to the emergency room at a hospital in Connecticut that accepted my insurance.
It has always been ironic to me that one of the horror stories told about the USSR is that people would have to “stand in line for toilet paper.” Not only is this an extreme hyperbole — people did have to occasionally stand in line in times of deficit, but this was not an everyday occurrence and a large quantity of the products they received were free –but it is also a textbook case of hypocrisy. Because there I was, in the capitalist U.S., at one of the most advanced hospitals in the area, waiting for approximately nine hours before being seen — while in the severe condition described above.
When I was finally invited to occupy a hospital bed, I had practically passed out and was immensely dehydrated. The staff asked me why I thought I had migraines and whether I was prescribed anything for them. I had an IV needle inserted into my arm (presumably to take a blood sample or give me fluids), but nothing was ever attached to it.
Half an hour later, I was handed a very large sippy cup of ice-cold tap water and told to drink it. When I had finished drinking it, the doctor cheerfully told me that they were diagnosing me with migraines, wished me luck, told me she hoped the medication I had recently been prescribed by my physician would work, and said that I could go home.
A few weeks later, a statement came in the mail. If I had not had insurance, the bill I would have had to foot for that hospital visit would have been just over $1,000.
I have always been horrified by the state of affairs in healthcare in the United States — especially being from the Soviet Union, where doctors were adequately trained and would treat you for free. Hearing stories from comrades, friends and family who lived in Cuba, I knew that there was still at least one place in the world where you could walk into a hospital and receive free, prompt medical treatment, and felt compelled to contrast that with the U.S..
Because the medical field here is largely privatized in the same way other resources are, the owners of medical facilities compete similarly to other capitalists. Not only do large suppliers of medication and equipment face off in efforts to edge each other out, but individual hospitals are often forced to be run from a for-profit perspective. The result is not only a horrifically immoral focus on squeezing money out of sick people rather than treating them, but also some ridiculously high prices on basic materials, as evidenced by my sippy cup.
Founder of Medical Billing Advocates of America Pat Palmer created an itemized list of average items that are used to inflate medical bills. According to his findings, one Tylenol pill costs the average patient $15, adding up to an average of $345 per hospital stay. Non-sterile latex gloves (the cheaper version) cost an average patient $53, adding up to an average of $5,141 per stay. Each plastic cup used to administer medicine costs a patient about $10, for an average of $440 per stay. The average price of the use of a marking pen (to mark the body for surgery or other purposes) is $17.50.
The list goes on. As we know, all of these items can be found in a pharmacy for just a few dollars, and wholesale prices of them go down even further when they are purchased in bulk. Imagining the sheer amount of profit extracted from these basic materials by those profiting off of medical establishments is shocking.
Medical centers and hospitals also have some of the most illogically widely ranged prices among all types of establishments. According to a Reader’s Digest investigation, the cost of an acute appendicitis admission in the state of California (289 medical centers and hospitals polled) can range from $1,529 to almost $183,000. As technology advances, charges rise further and further, curbed only by the amount insurance companies are willing to pay for services. The tragedy that so many poor and working people do not have health insurance at all, and have to foot these exorbitant bills themselves, exacerbates the situation further.
The fact that this absurdity in medicine is presented as a normal, acceptable part of life is a symptom of the profound sickness of capitalism. When decisions about people’s health and survival are made by a system of profiteers, not a system based on human need, people suffer endlessly. The only way to do away with this terrible assault on people’s basic right to live is by taking down the capitalist system. People in this country and across the world deserve free, quality healthcare. Today, there are no excuses — we have the resources; we just need to claim what’s rightfully ours.
