The Point of the Whole Damn Thing

We're bringing little Quinn home from the hospital today. More later, maybe. Or maybe not.

UPDATE: "Well, I'm back."

We exited the hospital with Quinn in tow at about 10:00 this morning, whereupon we went to The Store and spent an hour there walking him around and showing him to everyone I could find. Then we got home and awaited the arrival of the home care nurse whose job it was to show us how to use the G-tube, the arrival of the home health company whose job it is to set up our suction machine, and more.

Of course, the day wasn't complete without numerous calls to the hospital and the insurance company, since apparently our insurance people prefer that we use different home health companies for the stuff we need at home, despite the fact that all these wheel were set in motion days ago. And as of this writing, some of this stuff is still "in the air", with us sitting at home hoping that the tumblers fall into place the way they're supposed to and that by the end of today we actually have all the stuff at home that we're supposed to have in order to be able to, you know, feed our baby. Everyone we talk to says some variant of "Oh, don't worry, it'll all work", but on the basis of how much of this whole process has worked without worry thus far, I'm not going to bet the house on it.

So let me just say this: you can make all the arguments against universal health care from a cost standpoint that you want, but I will never give one iota of credence to the idea that universal health care would a priori be more inefficient than the half-assed patchwork health care system we've got running right now, in which about seven or eight different organizations, companies, agencies, bureaus, boards, and corporations have to be involved in some manner in something so mundane as bringing an infant home from the hospital, even one such as ours who has special needs (but whose special needs aren't particularly demanding or remarkable just now, as special needs go). You want to convince me that the market can do things cheaper, that's one thing. But I'm just not going to buy the idea that the market can do everything easier, which sometimes actually does trump "cheaper".