Jun. 29, 2003 - 23:10 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Top Kicked Off

After my entry reached out and touched someone last night, that person told me that we are lucky here in Denver because the hospital there had closed up entirely.

Seems like schools and hospitals are getting short shrift now, even during the good years the voters don't seem to want to see their taxes increased even a mil to keep a public hospital alive or a school have adequate anything. Along with the population greying and unwilling to foot any part of the bill because they say, "I paid my dues while my kid was in school," and medical care for the indigent -- they feel that tax money shouldn't go toward medical care for the indigent.

Difficult to even get tax money for fire protection nowadays.

From what is said in the paper today (JOA Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post on Sundays) our two hospitals here in Denver funded by tax money are going the route that many private hospitals have been doing for years, letting a person lay on the table while a person with a pen and an official clipboard determines whether the person suffering is covered financially before treatment begins. There have been scandals here in town over that through the years.

There are people who work hard but are not paid enough to belong to a HMO or any other plan and their only recourse is to to go to a public, tax supported, hospital to be cared for when ill. Most people in that kid of situation don't go see a doctor if they aren't well, they keep going until their ailment is a life threatening emergency 'cause they can't pay for a private physician. Before I qualified to join a HMO we had to take one of our kids to an ER at the public hospital. They did take care of our kid and then arrangements for us to pay were made.

So now people are being turned away from the two biggies because they don't qualify due to one thing or another to be treated as indigents by the ER. They get sent away with their broken limbs, broken out teeth deep pain of any kind. Sorry Joe, no dough, no go, ta ta, see you later. Appointments to one of the clinics are for sometime in the future there now, weeks or even a month or so before they will be seen, and by then if t wasn't an emergency then it is before they can be seen in a clinic.

What it said in the paper for Denver Health Medical Center was they are closing some clinics, laying peope off and forbidding the nurses to have a union. Sure money is tight right now.

Guess I am a big dumbo and can't quite understand how the wheels of industry and finance are spinning madly one minute and screeching to a dead halt the next. I guess that giant sucking sound is the money retreating back into those capacious wallets of the biggies.

Seems to me that it is time to realize the truth in the old saying, "The poor we will have with us always," and see that they have decent medical care, education and housing. Many people nowadays are suddenly becoming poor, who are not immigrants, who were making a decent living, buying a home and taking care of a family. Through the loss of a job suddenly they are poor. I could be next, my pension disappear, you could be next, your job disappear - flood - famine - tornado pulling your house off over your head like a sweater. It could happen to any of us. But we played it smart and voted down a tax increase that would have kept the doors open for all, "Because we already paid our dues."

Thing that worries me is the possibility of things getting worse, maybe like the 1929/1930's depression. Back then people didn't dare get sick or died for lack of attention. People were begging for food, standing in soup lines just to get a bite to survive the night.

Daughter and her family were due in Boulder, Colorado at her in-law's home today. Judging by the time they left home they should have been in during the afternoon. At eight-thirty PM I called up there and they had just walked in. Heather and I worry about them as the route to Denver for them carries them on that dreadful I-80 through Wyoming that we were on when my neck got broken in an accident. We had passed many scenes of wreckage back then. Daughter said she was amazed at the number of wrecks that held them up on the way - all on I-80.

We will get to spend a bit of time with her tomorrow morning until they head off to IMAX and then back up to Boulder for another night or so with the in-laws.

Father and son will be going to Poland (the land of his ancestry) for a week or so and we will have daughter and her daughter all to ourselves and our family. It'll be a blast, they have some summertime activities lined up for the girl and the boy when he returns. It won't be just sitting around for any of us, but rushing from one thing to another having a good time and a ball.

For a month or so things here will be like an ant pile with the Top Kicked Off . . . . . . . . . .

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