daily life behind the Iron Curtain

[JBrown72073 at cs.com]

>> Anesthesia in Russia costs money.
>
>It does in the US too.  But I've never met a surgeon that
>would remove an appendix w/o it.  (and are we talking about
>the vaunted pre-Gorby Russia with healthcare for all?
>
>It is fucking barbaric to do such a procedure w/o anethesia.
>
- -It also happened in my country. Until 3 years ago, our public healthcare

- -system din´t pay for analgesia during delivery (so we had a extremely

- -high index of cesarean delivery, since women usually didn´t have the

- -money to pay for analgesia, and weren´t stupid enough to have delivery

- -withouth analgesia).

                                            Alexandre Fenelon

Which reminds me of the following description, in my glittering country, of 
women on Medicaid trying to get epidurals for childbirth:

"Some doctors and hospitals have been forcing poor women to pay hundreds of 
dollars in cash for a popular procedure to relieve pain in childbirth, 
federal officials say, and the government has ordered hospitals to stop de
manding such cash payments . . . In some states . . . the obstetrician 
ordered the epidural in advance, but when the woman was in active labor, she 
was refused this service for lack of prepayment.  Even though she tried to 
pay by check, credit card and a Western Union money telegram, the doctor 
refused anything but cash. ... Women said it was humiliating to dispatch 
their husbands to automated teller machines, friends and neighbors to get 
cash."  This last line should get an award for understatement.  (3/8/99 New 
York Times)

Jenny Brown