Just two months ago, Donald Trump was warning against “bailouts” for Democratic-run states that were grappling with the financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s not fair to the Republicans because all the states that need help – they’re run by Democrats in every case,” the US president said at the time, as hard-hit states such as New York and California sought federal financial relief from the impact of the virus.
Two months later, the US map of new coronavirus outbreaks looks entirely different. States that reopened quickly, as the president advised, are now seeing a surge in cases and a rising hospitalizations and that is impacting the Republican heartland. States that Trump won in 2016 account for about 75% of the new cases, according to the Associated Press.
This is a lot of conjecture and innuendo reading between the lines of the TMC numbers, but it appears that the ICUs of the public hospitals in Houston (Ben Taub and LBJ) filled up quickly, but there are plenty of beds at the private community hospitals (Memorial Herman, Methodist, St. Luke’s). The private hospitals, however, are not required to admit uninsured patients who don’t present at the ER. So the public hospitals might be full, the private ones have room and are turning them away, so the public ones are sending them to Austin, as though Austin isn’t in need of those public beds. Abbott could order the private hospitals to accept all patients regardless of insurance, but hasn’t even mentioned the possibility. Kind of a remarkably comprehensive condemnation of our health system.
This is the other shoe of the pandemic that I have been waiting to drop. I haven’t seen any bitching from health insurers yet*, but someone is paying for all this at some point. I saw a Twitter thread from Rep. Katie Porter where she felt sick and so got tested; the COVID test was free (thanks to legislation she helped push through) but they charged her for flu test they have to do before you can have the COVID test. She bitched and got that paid for as well, but that’s only because she knows the minutae of the legislation and it was meant to cover all the associated costs.
I suspect that they are keeping mum because they don’t want to draw attention to the fact that the US taxpayers are picking up this tab, which might lead more of them to wonder why we even bother with for-profit health insurance. No one in the rest of the industrialized world is having a debate about who’s paying for the pandemic; it’s unique to the US.
My sister is a hospitalist at Ben Taub - doesn’t sound like a good situation there. Her fiancee works at Memorial Hermann and it’s worse than Ben Taub. Don’t think there are regular ICU neds anywhere, but they are getting by for now converting other wards to Covid ICU service.
I’m currently in the Guadalupe Regional Hospital in Seguin getting some skin grafts over where I burned myself setting a brush pile on fire. There are 4 floors here and the nurses have told me that one of the floors is dedicated to coronavirus patients and some are coming from the Houston area. My burn surgeon was one of the Doctors on call this weekend and he told me about all the precautions he had to take before going on that floor.
Florida education commissioner mandates all schools must reopen campuses this fall
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Florida Department of Education has issued an order requiring that all schools must reopen for in-person classes this fall.
According to the plan released Monday evening, all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools in August at least five days per week for all students, subject to the advice and orders of the Florida Department of Health.
Let me guess, poured the gas (and alot of it) but forgot your matches…or your lighter didn’t work. By the time you went off and grabbed the matches/lighter and came back the fumes had spread out 10’-15’ feet from the pour zone? Happened to a buddy of mine. He got burned damn bad too. Hope you get all done up and back to as close to 100% as can be managed soon.
