Reply To: DW Community Catch-up Thread

I have maybe posted this here before, not sure, but here is my story. My sister and her husband went to Florida to take a cruise. They planned to spend a couple days at their hotel and enjoy the area/relax. We are all Canadians.
Within 3 hours of checking into their hotel, my sister was struck by a speeding drunk driver while she was crossing the street at a marked crosswalk. I will spare you all the awful details but she was rushed to a nearby Trauma unit. She was so extensively injured that she never “woke up” and if she had survived she would have been in a state so as to need to live in an intensive care facility for the rest of her life. She died, irretrievably broken, 10 days later.
My point is to comment on the American medical/insurance system. Also the insurance system for vehicles/accidents. Fortunately my sister and spouse had gold plated health and travel insurance. The idiot who killed her, apparently had 10,000 coverage. Here we are required to have a minimum of 200,000 and many people opt to pay for 1 million in coverage to cover pay outs in case of injury or death. This guy had 10,000. What a joke! We could have sued but the stress of that, especially since there were 2 different countries involved was not worth it to us.
During the time my sister laid comatose, I was approached by a Dr. who asked me what I thought of the care my sister was receiving. I told him that it was excellent. I also told him that in Canada she would have had great care as well, but that we/no-one would at such an awful time, have to give any thought to money…a whole other stress by itself. He replied that if my sister did not have insurance they still would treated her. Great, but again, besides all the medical issues she would likely have forever, she would be bankrupted by the bills.
They were admin people from the hospital that actually followed us and my brother-in-law around the hospital, asking when we or he was planning to come to the office and give them money…the whole thing was shameful.
Our system is not perfect but i don’t think compassion and care should come with a price tag. My brother-in law- found out later that the costs for her care ( that thankfully were covered by his insurance) were in the 450,000 dollar range. If they had been able to do some of the procedures they were hoping to, like surgery on her shattered legs, which they did not do as she was so unresponsive etc; I imagine it all would have cost over a million dollars.