Writes Luis Almeida:

Just got back from spending 12 hours in emergency care. Eight of which were spent in a waiting room. My wife had an acute abdominal pain that came on very suddenly. We have three kids and she said the pain was worse than any she felt during labor. The first hospital we went to was a public hospital close by. She couldn't get out of the car nor walk by herself. Triage sent someone with a band aid on their finger ahead of her and the receptionist scolded me for not calling an ambulance. I promptly took her outside, called an ambulance and had them take us to another hospital which is the premier, private urgent care facility in South Florida.

OK, now we're set, right? Private care. I have the best insurance available, we're arriving in an ambulance. Life is good. Not quite. We got there at 7:30pm. She spoke to a doctor for the first time at 2:30am. Granted, once we got there, her condition improved, but no other ambulances pulled in. Nobody had life threatening injuries. A seven hour wait when you have the best insurance available and are a paying customer is outrageous.

In Brazil, where I'm from, if you have insurance, you go to a private clinic and they treat you like the valued customer that you are. If you don't have insurance, you go to a public hospital and wait in line, and sometimes die there, too. It's not a good situation for those that can't afford health care. I now know what it feels like to not be able to afford healthcare despite paying through the nose for it. I have now experienced the wonders of equality and I have a new definition for socialism - a system where you don't have the option to pay a market price for a service that you want. It's as if everyone is thrown in to the same sinking canoe and the only ones able to bail are the ones that have buckets (insurance). Everyone else is just ballast. Free healthcare for everyone? Ok, cool, does that now mean that I can pay to see a doctor when I want to?

Despite the risk of getting in trouble with the HIPAA gestapo, I would like to share with you that all is fine with my wife.