Going to A hospital emergency room has never been my idea of a fun outing. I find it to be a depressing place filled with a sea of desperate people seeking relief. Yesterday I became one of those people looking for relief from uncomfortable and unwanted pain. I also discovered a lot of things about the medical system that should be fixed.

Thursday is normally an upbeat day for me because I work a 4 day week and it is the last day before a nice long 3 day weekend. Unfortunately this would be one day that I would hope to never repeat again. As I awoke to start another workday, I noticed a sharp pain in my side. The pain rapidly intensified over the next few minutes and I asked my wife if she could drive me to the emergency room. The pain was all too familiar to an earlier episode that I had 12 years ago and I knew that it would not pass. A trip to the hospital was the only course of action. My wife drove me to the hospital and I tried not to upset her by revealing the magnitude of the pain that I was in.

There is an important tip that people who visit the emergency should know. It is not a first come first serve situation. The ones with the greatest sense of need will get treatment first. I made sure that every employee within my visual range could understand the amount of pain I was in. Asking the admissions nurse for a bucket to throw up in is also a good touch.

As I was escorted to the back I was put into a “holding” room with several other people. We were put in reclining chairs and examined to determine the cause of our visit. The “holding” room was where patients were taken because there were not enough individual rooms to supply all the patients. It was at this time that I realized that the medical system needed fixing.

Emergency rooms are filled beyond capacity with people waiting for treatment. It can take hours before a doctor can see you. There are two major problems. There are not enough funds to treat all the people are there are too many people who go to the emergency room for non-emergency problems. Here some of the cases I observed:

• A man came in because the blood sugar monitor he was using showed that his blood sugar was fluctuating throughout the day. The monitor was one he had borrowed from a friend. The doctor told him that is was normal for a person’s blood sugar level to fluctuate during the day.
• A man came in because he was having a case of indigestion.
• A woman brought in her child because he had a cold.

People need to realize that an emergency room is not to be used as a free clinic. It is for “emergencies” and needs to be available for people who are in dire need of medical treatment.

Medical facilities are vastly underfunded and this problem needs to be solved. A report was released recently that 45% of American taxpayers will not pay any federal taxes for 2010. This is ridiculous. All employed people should pay some amount of taxes. The loopholes for getting out of paying taxes need to be fixed. The rich people need to pay their fair share, but the less fortunate must also contribute something even if it is very small. Everyone must contribute to the system or it will never change. If we all do our part, then we can help make the medical system work better.

Then again, this may just be the morphine talking.