I’m going to be splitting hairs here so feel free to disregard I just wanted to be precise.
Stab wounds and other immediately life threatening treatment is about as good as can be expected and emergency rooms can’t turn you down for finance/insurance reasons. You’ll get a massive bill but they can’t really deny you healthcare in this instance.
Now, where you get really fucked over is the years and years of preventative healthcare that would normally prevent/treat the worst outcome as well as the refusal to seek help for what should be concerning enough to warrant a hospital visit otherwise over cost. Torn rotator cuff? Take 1000mg of over-the-counter ibuprofen and hope it goes away.
PineRune@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I knew a guy that was tortured to death in prison by medical staff for having stomach cancer and bothering the nurses too much about it.
At first, before diagnosis, he couldn’t keep food down. He asked for a medical exam and they scheduled one like a week out, but canceled it because his blood pressure was too high. The next one was cancelled as was the one after that. By the time they actually looked at him, the cancer had spread and gone terminal. He was going to die by medical neglect.
Some time later, his esophagus ruptured in the night, and the nurse they called at home to check on him said he was faking over the phone, so they locked him in a TV room through the night because he wouldn’t stop screaming in pain. Around 9am they got him to a hospital but the damage had already gone septic and he died.
On paper, prisoners might have better “healthcare” but I will never forget the horror stories of people who have actually had to deal with the system. The medical people in prisons will not give a single shit about these people’s lives and will actively work against them for being minority inconvenienced.