> idiotic inference that things you really need should be free to you.

Yes, I think healthcare should be “free” (meaning paid for through taxes) and available for all. I think that’s about as far from idiotic as one can get without re-creating the current privatized healthcare system.

Thanks for your comment, we’ve had a lack of smug assholes ’round here lately, and frankly it was getting boring.

Doctors don’t really give a fuck about their patients… if they did, it wouldn’t really matter if the patients had health insurance or not.

While I agree with the obviousy stupidity of this woman and her snakes, I must take exception to the above statement.

If a doctor took non-paying patients, he would soon find himself inundated with no means to pay for the expenses of running an office. Being a doctor is a business, just like being a plumber. It costs money to run that business.

Bear in mind that it is somewhat ironic that you laugh at this woman for being stupid while at the same time make the idiotic inference that things you really need should be free to you. There’s a reason that the first chapter of most Economics 101 texts is “Supply and Demand.”

Doctors don’t really give a fuck about their patients… if they did, it wouldn’t really matter if the patients had health insurance or not.

While I agree with the obviousy stupidity of this woman and her snakes, I must take exception to the above statement.

If a doctor took non-paying patients, he would soon find himself inundated by patients with no means to pay for the expenses of running an office. Being a doctor is a business, just like being a plumber. It costs money to run that business.

Bear in mind that it is somewhat ironic that you laugh at this woman for being stupid while at the same time make the idiotic inference that things you really need should be free to you. There’s a reason that the first chapter of most Economics 101 texts is “Supply and Demand.”

There’s a major difference between a suicide attempt or not wearing a seatbelt and intentionally playing with deadly snakes. Suicide attempts are desperate acts, typically involving someone who doesn’t see any other way to alleviate the pain of day-to-day living. It’s really disingenuous to put somebody who didn’t wear a seatbelt in the same category as someone who willfully toys with extremely dangerous animals.

Pharmacists who won’t fill prescriptions based on their religious preferences should find jobs doing something which won’t put them in a position to discriminate against others (or compromise themselves). If they’re not filling prescriptions they’re not doing their job… they’re not doctors. Refuse and sanitation work seems like a better career path for those folks than allowing them to remain in a care provider’s role and allowing them to jeapardize someone else’s health care.

The woman definitely was treated, and the matter of the tube being inserted was the call of the doctor on duty. Perhaps he felt that putting the tube in would delay the woman’s treatment (ie.- delay getting her shipped to the hospital in Lexington) and would jeapordize her recovery. Whether that’s negligence is up to the court to decide, not you or me.

It’s still open season on stupidity… and playing with deadly snakes is definitely moronic.

Her blood pressure dropped; her heart rate went up; her neck, face and tongue swelled; and she went into shock. However, a doctor failed to properly treat her and did not put in a tube to help her breathe, according to the lawsuit.

and

At 8:28 p.m., hospital personnel contacted the air ambulance service. When the helicopter arrived 12 minutes later, the crew asked the doctor to put in a tube to help Long breathe,, but the doctor said her airway was not the problem and told the flight crew to get her to Lexington quickly

We may view what she did and how she came to be bitten by a rattlesnake as ironic, funny, inevitable, or whatever, and the hospital staff is certainly entitled to think likewise. However, when it comes to treating a rattlesnake bite, the hospital staff had a duty to care for her as they would any other patient and to provide adequate treatment. Whatever the doctor’s personal feelings about this woman, failing to address her breathing difficulties, if true, is inexcusable, and from the sound of it, this may well be one of those times when a lawsuit is absolutely warranted. Do we really want doctors deciding which patients deserve treatment based on their personal beliefs?

How many of you laugh when a pharmacist refuses to fill a birth-control prescription because they disagree with the patient’s religious beliefs? Should doctors delay treatment of the attempted suicide? Or stand around and make derogatory comments about an accident victim who wasn’t wearing her seatbelt?

The only thing worse than a retard is a greedy retard with a feral lawyer. The hospital’s defense should be that this woman was brain-dead long before she showed up on their doorstep. The only thing I find regretable about this incident is that she is old enough to have most probably spawned before removing her mentally defective self from the gene pool.

I also have a problem with this: A believer is supposed to bow and scrape, and praise and worship (and pay), but if that believer is participating in an act of faith that either backfires or doesn’t pan out, they were “testing” Gawd. Pfui! You get the same result from testing a dead battery. ‘Aint nothing there! Gawd didn’t get mad because he was being “tested”, and wave his magic penis and cause the snake to bite that woman, it’s the nature of the beast.

This is a major over-generalization, but it sure seems this way… though I’ve been lucky and getting good ones lately. :)

That’s one of my most treasured rights! Praises be to the Founding Fathers.

If I’m playing with fireworks and blow off my arm then that’s not anybody else’s fault.

If I’m playing with a plugged-in lamp while lounging in the bathtub and electrocute myself then that’s not anybody else’s fault.

If I’m playing with poisonous snakes and I get bit then it’s not anybody else’s fault either.