Thread by @medicalaxioms

Americans have Universal Healthcare:
- drop nearly dead in a Major Metropolitan Area
- get delivered by ambulance to the nearest hospital and stay there; EMTALA
- days to months of ICU/floor care
- get released, get bill, go bankrupt

It may sound like a bad system at first blush. Here are the benefits:
- hospital often still gets paid—they apply for “emergency Medicaid” for these patients.
- instead of some rumpled family medicine doctor handing out lisinopril, we getting to put in stents, do ECMO, etc.

Dialysis, surgery, heroic stuff. Not stupid boring old chronic disease management.

Once our Universal Health Care system has done its work and got you disabled, jobless and homeless, then we can toss you some Medicaid so you can get your lisinopril.

The system isn’t cruel after all.

Everybody knows paying for office visits is dirty old socialism and/or godless communism.

Paying for ICU stays is gloriously democratic capitalism for hard working self starters who make America great.

Even patients know that a bunch of stents and a @ProtectedPCI Impella Device is way more fancier than some stupid statin tablets. That makes the bankruptcy feel better.

In Canada, you wait in some boring waiting room for hours watching hockey in TV before you see your frumpy doctor.

In the US, your medical care is in the hospital and you get a call button and lots of channels to choose from.

This is why American 🇺🇸 is better than Canada 🇨🇦.