Yesterday I met an American woman whose family moved here last year because they couldn't afford the care her daughter needs to fight cancer. The moppet, who keeps her bald pate warm amidst Bangkok's ubiquitous air-conditioning by wearing a fetching bandana, frolicked nearby as her mum shared their story.
I was as appalled by their situation as I was impressed by their resourcefulness. How lucky they are that this lady's husband works in an industry such that he could move overseas if need be.
And yet, how sick -- how utterly sick, no pun intended -- that the U.S. healthcare system and insurance companies have reached a point that some Americans have no alternative but to seek treatment abroad to avoid the poorhouse. Not for elective or aesthetic treatment, mind you, but for necessary, life-saving treatment.
Thailand was a great choice for this little girl, by the way. The state-run hospitals might not be that great, I don't know. But the private hospitals, at least in Bangkok, provide services that would equal or surpass those available in the West, at a fraction of the cost.
What happens to all the ill U.S. Americans (as opposed to the other North Americans, the Canucks, who have a national health system) who have no way to get out and move to another country for affordable healthcare? It may be the home of the free (less so since the Patriot Act, etc) and land of the brave (excluding the Bush administration's most ardent civilian hawks, who all found ways to avoid the draft), but the United States is becoming, health-wise, the trap of the untended. It's a scandal.
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