Healthcare needed

 A little over a year ago I had to go to the emergency room at Healthmark in DeFuniak Springs because I'd slipped down on my front porch and jammed my elbow and shoulder.

There was an elderly couple in the space next to me with the curtain drawn and they were crying. The old man was trying to convince his wife that they shouldn't go to the cardiac unit at another hospital because it would ruin them financially. He said he was 85 and he wasn't going to live much longer anyway. It didn't make sense to him to save his life for a few years and leave his family with nothing after working so hard all his life.

I lay there listening to this stunned. The doctor came by, opened their curtain and bluntly said, "If you don't go soon, you will die," and walked away.

The wife was choking on her tears and begging him to go. She said she had called someone to drive him there so they wouldn't have to pay for an ambulance. She said it wasn't all up to him, that she was part of the decision.

Right after that they took me to X-ray and when they brought me back the couple was gone. I don't know what happened to them but that scene plays over and over again in my mind.

That should never have happened in the United States of America.

For those who don't think we need a national health care system in this country, I hope you never have to hear anything like that much less have your family make a decision between the life of one of the people you love and the financial well being of the rest of your family. It happens every day in the greatest country in the world. People in other developed countries never have to worry about being able to afford hospital bills and vital medicines. We need to make sure future generations of Americans never have to make such awful choices.

Eileen West

DeFuniak Springs