There is no universal healthcare in the US. The government does not provide benefits to citizens or visitors, so any time someone needs medical attention, someone has to pay for it.
On top of that, healthcare in the country is very expensive. According to a government website, if you break your leg, you could end up with a bill for $7,500. If you need to stay in the hospital for three days, it will probably cost about $30,000.
And Lex Hinkley has a problem with this system. After witnessing how it operates from the inside, the 27-year-old nurse based in San Diego recently turned to social media to share why she thinks America needs to "completely dismantle" its current model.
27-year-old nurse Lex Hinkley recently shared her frustration with the American healthcare system, and explained why she thinks all the for-profits have to go
Image credits: travelingnurse
"It is virtually impossible to be a ethical healthcare worker in this extremely unethical healthcare system."
"The amount of times I've had to discharge patients back to situations where I knew they weren't going to be able to take care of themselves but I had no other options is truly too high to even give a number to."
Image credits: wanderrlex
"If my career as a healthcare worker has done anything to my worldview or life it has simply radicalized me further than anyone could believe."
"But more so than anything else, I know in my heart that there is no way, shape, or form that we improve our society as a whole without completely dismantling 'for profit' healthcare."
Image credits: travelingnurse
"I'm gonna share with you guys a story that is so beyond f**king disgusting and yet completely unsurprising, and I have seen varying levels of this happen at every single hospital I have worked at."
"I've been a nurse for four years. I've worked in seven states. It is happening everywhere, and if you think your hospital is different, you're f**king wrong."
Image credits: travelingnurse
"Recently, and I mean as of December, hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky came under fire for leaving patients outside on f**king sidewalks."
"They do this in front of shelters, they will drop patients off in front of shelters just like this. But sometimes they don't even take them to the shelter, they literally leave them right outside the hospital."
Image credits: travelingnurse
"This specific patient was left in this condition in 36 degree weather. The whistleblower who brought this to the media was a female employee, presumably a healthcare worker, at this hospital, and she said she sees this a lot."
"This reporter said, 'So I started watching and on December 16th at 7 p.m., 35 degrees outside, I recorded three security guards surrounding an elderly woman with a walker and slowly escorting her out of the emergency room.'"
Image credits: travelingnurse
"In order to understand what could potentially lead to a situation like this, we need to know two things."
"One, the United States has a law called EMTALA, which basically says that healthcare workers in emergency rooms and hospitals have to, at the very least, stabilize patients. Meaning, make sure they're not actively dying before discharging them."
"The second thing you need to understand is that when you defund social programs, it all ends up in the ER. When you defund senior care, when you defund psychiatric care, when you defund shelters, whether it's homeless shelters, woman's shelters, when you defund the safety nets that our society needs to prevent people from beginning a crisis downward spiral, they end up in the ER."
Image credits: Pixabay (not the actual photo)
"And simply put, ER workers and hospital workers are already at their f**king wit's end. We cannot act as a catch-all for every single issue in society, and yet, we are. Here we are doing it. And at the very f**king same time, treating people like literal f**king garbage? Should never f**king happen. Should never f**king happen, and yet I understand what caused that situation to occur."
"Because I'm sure that in a red state like Kentucky, those social programs are even worse funded than in the states that I've worked in. So these people, and by these people I mean patients, healthcare workers, and their bosses, have no f**king options. Meanwhile, the executives of that hospital are probably f**king out on a trip in the Caribbean on their 7th yacht."
"The only way to fix this, the only way to fix situations as unethical and disgusting as this from happening is to fund solutions. We need to fund proper safety nets for our society."
Image credits: travelingnurse
"In this country, if you lose your job, you lose your health insurance, you potentially lose all of your income, which means you're not going to be able to pay rent. Well, then what happens if you get sick? Do you see what I'm saying? We don't have safety nets for our poor in this country."
"We have a greased chute. And at the very bottom of that greased chute of poverty is a trip to your local emergency room. Because everything ends up in the ER. And then we have nowhere to place people. We have no way to help people."
"And so people in that position get frustrated because they feel like they can't f**king do anything and they're being expected to have the answers for a very f**ked up system. They're having to answer for all of these executives, these corporate executives who have privately funded their own bank accounts instead of publicly funding our communities."
Image credits: Natanael Melchor (not the actual photo)
"So while it is f**king disgusting and inexcusable for any healthcare worker to treat a human being like that, I am telling you, society, you and me, right now, we're levelling with each other."
"The only way to avoid that s**t happening is to fund social programs. We have to fund elder care, we have to fund psychiatric care, we have to actually develop systems to help unhoused people."
"Look at what the mayor of Detroit has done. There are options. There are solutions for these problems, but they cost money. They cost money. And we, as a society, have said that we're a-okay with 400 people having 70 percent of the nation's wealth, while our community members get treated like this."
Hinkley's emotional rant has since gone viral
A majority of Americans agree with her
Among the public, 63% of U.S. adults say the government has the responsibility to provide health care coverage for all.
When asked how that should be achieved, 36% of Americans say a single national government program is the answer, while 26% say it should continue to be a mix of private insurance companies and government programs.
Interestingly, a 54% majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners now favor a single national government program to provide health insurance, while among Republicans and Republican leaners, a 66% majority says the government does not have the responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage.
Image credits: Cedric Fauntleroy (not the actual photo)
The United States trails far behind other high-income countries on healthcare
In 2021, the Commonwealth Fund took upon itself to assess the health care system performance in 11 high-income countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The organization analyzed 71 performance measures across five domains — access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes — drawn from Commonwealth Fund international surveys conducted in each country and administrative data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Health Organization.
The results showed that the top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care. The U.S. ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes, but second on measures of care process.
Four features distinguish top-performing countries from
the United States:
the United States:
- they provide for universal coverage and remove cost barriers;
- they invest in primary care systems to ensure that high-value services are equitably available in all communities to all people;
- they reduce administrative burdens that divert time, efforts, and spending from health improvement efforts;
- they invest in social services, especially for children and working-age adults.
So it sounds like nurse Hinkley's take is right on the money.
Hinkley's clip has received a lot of reactions, including similar stories
