Preview Of ObamaCare

(In fairness, this happened before the ObamaCare vote... but if you think it isn't a glimpse of what's to come, including the whining union apologists, you're deluded.)

On February 7, a Pittsburgh man died at home after ten calls to 911 failed to bring the EMS services he needed. According to the AP story, Curtis Mitchell and his common-law wife Sharon Edge made their first calls for help in the early hours of February 6. Help never came.

"I'm very angry, because I feel they didn't do their job like they supposed to," said Edge, 51. "My man would still be living if they'da did they job like they was supposed to ... They took somebody that I love away."

This was in the middle of "Snowmageddon", which dropped over 20 inches of snow in Pittsburgh. But according to the city's public safety director Michael Huss, it's no excuse.

"... You get out of that damn truck and you walk to the residence," Huss said. "That's what needed to happen. We could have carried him out."

But it's not what happened. Instead, Mitchell died on his couch. And now the EMS crews involved are facing punishment after an investigation into their dereliction of duty.

According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette story, at 5:50 am, an ambulance was four blocks from Mitchell's house... waiting for him to walk to them. By 6:09, crew chief Josie Dimon was tired of waiting.

"He ain't (expletive) comin' down, and I ain't waitin' all day for him," she told a colleague, crew chief Kim Long, at the dispatch center. "I mean, what the (expletive), this ain't no cab service."

And the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that Ms. Long, who had spoken several times with Edge, not only failed to relay to the EMS crew that Mitchell was too sick to walk, she failed to request a four-wheel-drive vehicle to reach the scene. She did at some point advise Mitchell to take a bus. At another point during the storm she advised the mother of a two-year-old to walk for help as well.

The morning of February 8, Edge made her last 911 call. To let them know Mitchell had died. While the firefighters dispatched to the house managed to arrive in only two minutes, the body of Curtis Mitchell lay for five hours on the couch before personnel from the medical examiner's office arrived to transport him.

Now, three of the EMS workers involved will be punished, with Josie Dimon - who doesn't work for a (expletive) cab service - facing termination. And their union president, Anthony Weinmann is squealing about it.

"We believe this (punishment) is completely unfounded and inherently wrong," said Weinmann, president of the Fraternal Association of Professional Paramedics, Local 1. "It is quite obvious that the city was ill-prepared for the snow disaster. The administration in charge of public safety did not put the employees of the City of Pittsburgh in a position to carry out their responsibility."

sigh...

First, let me just say: Snow disaster my ass. That's a lame excuse, don't buy it. I live right outside of Pittsburgh. It's not like that 20 inches of snow fell in one great plop. And I saw emergency vehicles in my own area, which is more rural than downtown Pittsburgh by far. Also, the fact that the shiftless heartless Ms. Long wanted Mitchell to take a city bus strongly suggests that at least some traffic was moving in town. This is further proven by the fact that firefighters were able to reach the Mitchell home in two minutes. Why the hell didn't the EMS workers call the fire department for help? Or - as their own public safety director mentioned - get off their asses and go to Mitchell?

So... after two days, over a dozen calls back and forth between the home and the 911 call center, and several calls cancelled because a man sick enough for an ambulance was too sick to walk to that ambulance, a man dies. The woman who had to watch him die then had to sit for hours with his body before it was collected. And the union would have us believe the EMS staff are the victims of the story.

Get ready for it, folks. If we can't get ObamaCare repealed, this is just a preview of what's to come for all of us. Lack of services, and unions (now elevated to a higher class than the rest of us, under the SEIU administration) who defend the indefensible.