
Teen Who Died of Covid-19 Was Denied Treatment - maxwell
https://gizmodo.com/teen-who-died-of-covid-19-was-denied-treatment-because-1842520539
======
redis_mlc
For non-US readers: Somebody made an incorrect decision to take him to an
urgent care office, which requires immediate insurance or payment, rather than
a hospital, which has to admit you if you're acutely ill, then bills you
later.

You're supposed to use urgent care for minor things like an earache or
prescription refill.

The "insurance hack" in the US is that since hospitals must accept you if
you're critically ill, you don't need any insurance to get admitted and
treated initially. Also the initial paperwork is less burdensome if you're
critical.

The reason for that is because hospitals were dumping comatose patients on
lawns at other hospitals to reduce their costs. Hey, capitalism.

~~~
kwhitefoot
> For non-US readers: Somebody made an incorrect decision to take him to an
> urgent care office, which requires immediate insurance or payment

Is this something that all US readers would know? What about people who have
never been to such a place?

> You're supposed to use urgent care for minor things like an earache or
> prescription refill.

Surely urgency comes in degrees and someone with the symptoms of COVID-19 is
surely in more urgent need than someone who has an earache.

I realize that the name is just what it is called; I'm not really arguing for
a change of name, after all it's not my country, but it does seem quite
plausible that someone might go to such a place under the (mis)apprehension
that urgent needs would be attended to and payment be dealt with afterward.

~~~
zamadatix
I doubt most people here realize the emergency room can't refuse a real
emergency due to lack of insurance but I almost guarantee fear of large
hospital bills is the reason the urgent care was the first stop, it's the
cheapest place to get care without needing an appointment. So unfortunately I
don't think it was confusion about what an urgent care offers (it's a pretty
well known service for the above reason) as much of fear of cost over going
straight to the emergency room.

------
Someone1234
They let a 17 year old die because they didn't have enough money?

In many other countries this would be criminally culpable but in the US they
aren't even going to release the name of the "urgent care" clinic. Immoral.

And don't even come to me with "well its complicated." No it isn't at all
complicated. The kid didn't have money so they turned him out on the street,
without even a safety evaluation, and he died before he could get care
elsewhere.

There's nothing complicated about that, you're pretending it is complicated to
avoid the moral and ethical implications of what actually happened.

People pretending like no medical triage, because he lacked means, is
perfectly fine and that it was actually the [medically unqualified] victim's
fault for not self-diagnosing well enough to go to the correct facility are
apologists of the worst kind. It defies both common sense and basic decency.

~~~
ng12
They didn't turn him out on the street: they sent him to the emergency room
and he died en-route. Urgent care clinics are not hospitals, they don't even
like writing prescriptions for anything other than antibiotics. At best they
could have called him an ambulance.

~~~
fiftyfifty
This. People need to understand that these clinics are not equipped to deal
with this stuff, they do not have ventilators and equipment like that. They
are not hospitals, some are no bigger than a dentist office. Some clinics like
this may only have one doctor on staff with just Nurses and PAs seeing
patients. If this kid was in that bad of shape they probably couldn't have
helped him at this facility.

~~~
salawat
Doesn't matter. If they made the professional judgement call he needed more
than they could offer, someone should have been calling 911 in order to get a
meat wagon on the way. If he was bad enough gone to have to head to an ER, th
he Urgent Care should have at a minimum hit him with prednisone and a
nebulizer treatment to get his airways open. Most also have Epi-Pens on site
if they were really worried about his chances of making it to the hospital
alive.

You don't get to cherry-pick patients because it's inconvenient. Shit happens,
and you're the Doc/NP. Get out the prescription pad, write a scrip or call in
to the nearest pharmacy to expedite, and have office staff or whoever drove
him in pick it up.

Welcome to professional culpability. Now if what they said was, we won't see
you because you can't pay; go to the ER, some naming and shaming is in order.

~~~
ng12
If someone's at risk of dying on the way to the hospital making a CVS run is
not the right call.

~~~
salawat
More meant as a mitigation to "The ambulance will be here in 15 minutes. Go
next door, get this, and bring it back so I can keep him alive until then."
You are by no means helpless as a medical practitioner with modern
pharmaceuticals minutes away most anywhere.

Not "Stop at CVS on your way there." Once a medical practitioner sees you are
in need of more intensive care the onus is on them to ensure they do what they
can to get you there alive.

I'm fairly secure in my assertion of these courses of action. Even bounced it
off an RN to make sure; so I'm not just pulling it out of my ass here.

------
CodeWriter23
> Mayor Parris explained in his YouTube video that the 17-year-old is believed
> to have had no underlying conditions that may have contributed to his death.

I guess Gizmodo missed this key update to the story. Odd, the update was
published some 2-1/2 days prior to publication of the Gizmodo article.

[https://www.kcra.com/article/california-minor-dies-due-to-
co...](https://www.kcra.com/article/california-minor-dies-due-to-coronavirus-
complications/31919733#)

------
ryanmercer
"Urgent Care" facilities are not emergency rooms or hospitals, they do not
have the equipment necessary, few have very little medical tech in them at all
with the most advanced things being contactless thermometers and _maybe_ an
x-ray. They are little more than offices with private examination rooms.

They are 100% for acute, non-life threatening illnesses and injury.

Whoever is claiming he was denied for insurance is likely confusing what was
actually said. Even if they'd had a suitcase full of unmarked non-sequential
20$ bills they'd likely have been able to do anything for him besides refer
them to an emergency room/call an ambulance.

This article is garbage, it is 100% trying to get clicks and isn't even
remotely actual journalism.

~~~
DuskStar
> This article is garbage, it is 100% trying to get clicks and isn't even
> remotely actual journalism.

So in other words, it's Gizmodo?

------
vondur
I know that is scary when here in the US when you don't have medical
insurance, but if they had called the emergency number (911) an ambulance and
paramedics would have been dispatched and he would have been taken to the
hospital quickly and would have received treatment. The hospital would have to
treat him, regardless of medical coverage. They would still be charged for the
services later, but they would have received treatment.

~~~
elliekelly
> They would still be charged for the services later, but they would have
> received treatment.

And his family would have been bankrupt from the ambulance ride alone, never
mind the cost of the treatment. A family that can't afford health insurance
for a 17 year old cannot afford healthcare in the US at all. Let alone
emergency healthcare. The family almost certainly went to Urgent Care first in
hopes of getting their very sick son treatment for $5,000 instead of $50,000
at a hospital.

~~~
nojvek
> And his family would have been bankrupt from the ambulance ride alone, never
> mind the cost of the treatment. A family that can't afford health insurance
> for a 17 year old cannot afford healthcare in the US at all. Let alone
> emergency healthcare.

This ^. I don't have health insurance, I can't afford it right now. If I had
covid-19 and I was very serious where the bill would be hundreds of thousands
of dollars, I would rather choose to die than to bankrupt my family.

US has one of the highest rates of preventable deaths.

