Medical Patients after SHTF

Mr. Aguirre,
I manage a Hemodialysis facility for a healthcare system in Detroit, Michigan. The scenario that is unfolding is the United States today is horrifyingly similar to the events that you have related in your book. Sadly I have come to grips with fact that it is likely not a matter of if, but when the other shoe will drop for the people of America and we begin our own nightmare. What has happened to dialysis patients in Argentina since the collapse? I am very concerned for my patients and what this type of economic calamity could mean for them.
Christopher

Hi Christopher,
Unfortunately this would fall into what kills you after the Collapse, something I already covered to some degree in this post.
When you hear about poverty going up a certain percent, this is what it involves as well; people not being able to pay for the proper medical treatment and eventually dieing.
In Argentina medicine is 100% free, sounds obamafantastic! must be some sort of wonderful paradise where health and medical issues are no longer a concern. Truth is the theory sound wonderful, the problem is when you actually depend on that free, government supported hospitals and clinics.
I've been to them. I've had family that didn't want to ... waste.. money on a proper private health plan hospitalized in them and I've gone to visit them. It is not pretty. Nor is it for the faint of heart.
Depending on where you land they might lack even the most basic supplies such as cotton and gauze, so that gives you an idea of how effective public medical care is in Argentina, and why anyone that has an ounce of brain and can afford it gets private health plans instead.

After the crisis there simply wasn't enough money, and the government facilities, including hospitals and schools aren't that different. Supplies and mantainance is still done is dollar prices. You don't realize how much you relly on imported good until you take a close look. As I write this, its been over a month now since the schools of Buenos Aires have been taken over by the protesting students and parents. No doubt there's a political struggle of power there as well, since the president hates the capitalist Mauricio Macri, who happens to run the city of Bs. As.. But in spite of that its still true that public education in Argentina is just a shadow of what it used to be 20 years ago, and the difference is greater if you go back 30 years, before the liberals started destroying this country.
If the crisis goes on, expect medicine to become privatized, no matter if officially you happen to have free for all medicine. It just doesn't work, at least not in the long run, corruption and burocracy makes it too expensive. We are a good example of that.
Stay tuned for another story of the collapse, about a place called "Open Door".

FerFAL