In 1999, my mother went to the ER with severe bleeding. The attending physician diagnosed her with an unusually heavy menstrual cycle, and a UTI. He wrote her a prescription for antibiotics and sent her home. I guess I should mention that she was uninsured at the time. The symptoms did not clear up when she took the medicine, so she looked around for a doctor that would let her make payment arrangements. When she found one, he did the PROPER testing on her and found a cervical tumor roughly the size of a softball. She was then diagnosed with Stage III cancer. Despite the best efforts of the wonderful doctors at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, she was told she had terminal cancer and that she had a month to live. She died three weeks after her 41st birthday.
My question is, do you think the attending physician in the ER gave her substandard treatment because she was uninsured? I bet if she HAD had insurance, they would have done a whole battery of tests right then and there…and possibly caught the cancer before it became untreatable. I wonder if I have a legal case here, gross negligence or discrimination, perhaps? I know a lawsuit won’t bring my mother back, but I don’t think I am the only one who has had something like this happen to them.
Doctors need to provide top-notch care to EVERYONE, not just those with insurance.