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Not mentioned in that story, but relevant. Modern cruise ships for the most part are equipped with medical facilities and staff of high standard, certainly hig
by pyalot2 13y ago
Not mentioned in that story, but relevant.
Modern cruise ships for the most part are equipped with medical facilities and staff of high standard, certainly higher than most destinations they set out for. It's mainly because that's regulation.
If a passanger falls seriously ill however, those facilities are merely the temporary means to keep you alive until the cruise ship arrives at the nearest port where it leaves you in the capable hands of local healthcare.
As it turns out, most of the time it means they kick you out of the ship to die. Because local healthcare of the garden variety is for the most part not capable of keeping a patient alive, unlike the shipborne medical facilities.
If you have the particular misfortune to be befallen of some sickness that looks anything like it could infect fellow passengers, no matter if serious or not, you might also be entirely on your own. Because things like quarantine facilities are not regulation. Because decontaminating a room is expensive, you'll likely spend the duration to the next port in a bare cell that's easy to disinfect afterwards. Should you die in there, they'll make it look like they cared for you, and if not, well they acted by the book.
The reason this macabre theatre happens is because of this. Should a passanger die on your ship, it's a huge headache for the cruise operator involving inspections, tons of paperwork, possibly a being forced to stay in port, missing a schedule and so forth. But if you can shuffle a passenger off to die somewhere else, it's no longer your problem.
There is just one thing worse for the cruise operator than having somebody die on his ship. It would be for multiple people to die, or many to fall sick, for which the hassle would be exponentially worse than a single dead passanger.
- Elrac 13y agoThank you for this sobering reminder about the lethal reality of "ostentatious feel-good meets cold Capitalism!" Sadly, what you say is not surprising and I have no reason to doubt it. But while in the second paragraph I was reminded of something completely different, and briefly thought that this is what you were going to tell us about: A recent Internet news item claimed that living out one's days on a cruise ship was a cheaper alternative to living in a retirement home. No really, this is not just some fluff, apparently there was a study in 2004 by geriatricists Lindquist and Golub where they speculated on this, which people can Google at their convenience. Cecil from _The Straight Dope_ takes a more skeptical view in this article: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3056/is-a-cruise-ship-a-cheap-alternative-to-an-old-folks-home http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3056/is-a-cruise-sh... . But, well, I think it's a fun idea to consider.
- pavlov 13y agoPerhaps not all that different from American health care in general? While someone is footing the bill, they'll work hard to keep you alive -- and also make sure it involves expensive work like tests and x-ray imaging for maximum billing. If you have the misfortune of suffering something that is not covered or is not profitable for some reason, they'll figure out a way to kick you out to die elsewhere. The interests of the corporations that run cruise ships and American hospitals are fundamentally the same.
- telephonetemp 13y agoThat sounds like an outline for a problem that should be happen across all service industries that are run privately/paid by insurance companies, not just healthcare. Do we hear more about it in (American) healthcare simply because it's something the most people interact with or is it noticeably worse there? For the record, I am not American and don't know what it is like to interact personally with US healthcare.
- lttlrck 13y agoThe healthcare issue in the US crosses stark idealogical divisions.
- refurb 13y agoThat's entirely not true. Please provide an example of an American who was denied life saving treatment because they did not have insurance. If it is a medical emergency, hospital are required to treat you, regardless of insurance status. Also, there are plenty of disproportionate share hospitals that treat the uninsured.
- theorique 13y agoI assume that cruise ship passengers are generally aware of this and purchase med-evac insurance so that they get helo'ed and / or jetted to (e.g.) top hospitals in Houston or Miami rather than (e.g.) Port-au-Prince. Or do passengers run into this as a regular problem?