Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9573570:


Break the bars 31 12, 12:53pm

@Tressa - Look at it this way Tressa, America is very much a first world country with the best of everything for the top five to ten percent and a third world country for everyone below the 50% line. Remote Area Medicine (RAM) https://ramusa.org/ was founded specifically because it's founder, Stan Brock, noted that for many Americans in many rural or depressed areas, getting any, let alone adequate, medical care would have been easier if they had been literally, 'on the moon.'

Think of this (and it is far worse in, say, the Appalachians) there is a sizable town in northeastern California (world's seventh richest economy) there is no hospital, no doctors and only a couple of volunteer EMTs. According to an ex-resident, the closest medical facility is the clinic at a local religious cult's ranch 20 minutes from town, no doctors, just couple of folks trained in basic first aid. If you're injured, in cardiac arrest or other real medical emergency, the closest real trauma care facility is two plus hours by car in Reno to the south or Redding to the west or a very expensive 30-minute medivac (airborne medical evacuation) helicopter ride. Everyone who can afford it carries medivac insurance which gives you one ride in the helo per year. It's not like your wonderful system in Germany where if you get into an accident on the Autobahn, a mobile surgical helo drops onto the freeway with a surgical team inside and can start operating as you are flown to a hospital.

Funny thing is, of course, that your medical emergency response system was based around an enhanced version of America's experience with the airborne medivac protocols that were developed during the Korean war and further refined during Vietnam to get wounded soldiers from the front lines onto a surgery table in less than an hour (the 'golden hour' of emergency medicine) of being wounded. Your people just applied it with vigor to taking care of your general population.

Like most of the things 'lacking' here in 'the 'States,' it is rarely if ever a matter of technology or know-how or relevant skills, we have those, but a LACK OF WILL to apply what we know for whatever lame excuse someone dreams up.