Episode 3. Hospital Madness

MIKE DONOVAN: The America that we are living in right now is not a free America. You know, Winston Churchill said, “When you're going through hell, keep going. You don't want to sit and wait there.” And the reality is that's what our healthcare workers are doing every day.

Welcome to not free America, episode three, hospital madness. Well folks, here we are on the front lines of what sometimes feels like the beginning of the end of the world. And yet we're here together feeling like we're about to go off a cliff or we're about to experience some horror, but knowing that we are going to do it together. Perhaps in the midst of this crisis, it's really, really important that we all remember we are all in this together. After all, we are living in an age of social distancing and isolating oneself, which is necessary to protect from the spread of this horrific disease.

But we can't forget that we aren't isolated and we really are all in this together. One thing this coronavirus has shown us is it does not discriminate. From the prime minister of England to sports celebrities, this disease is washing around the world and the rich and the powerful and the privileged who have enjoyed their systems are not immune to it.

However, their systems include the healthcare system and the disparity that we are seeing in hospitals is not only alarming, not only predictable, but perhaps the single greatest civil rights crisis in this entire ordeal. And that saying something because there are plenty of those abounding. So let's talk about hospitals, the front lines. And it's important to say, first and foremost, that I honor and respect our healthcare workers. These are people who are on the front lines. Everybody says it. And so it feels like something that's obligatory, you have to say. But just from a personal perspective, I know health care workers, I have healthcare workers in my family, healthcare workers that are important to me. None of those people ever imagined… I mean, sure, there's planning, there's metrics, there's doomsday scenarios. But I'm talking about people who are CAN’s and RN’s who I know in my family and are friends of mine.

They never expected to be on the front lines of a world war… and those generations have never actually had to fight before. This country isn't immune to disease. And, we certainly have had instances in the past whereas a people we have united to fight disease, but in this generation, it isn't known. And the healthcare workers of this generation are stepping up in ways that make me proud. It should make us all proud. That being said, they are screaming for help. You know, Winston Churchill said, “When you're going through hell, keep going. You don't want to sit and wait there.”

And the reality is that's what our healthcare workers are doing every day. But we have to know and have to pay attention to the disparity of healthcare treatment right now and the potential that when everything breaks and the entire system collapses, what does that look like and how do we respond? How do we prepare?

What do I mean? Well, we have a hotline for people to call nationwide who experienced civil rights violations. That's my company… Nexus services has that hotline. That hotline is set up and we'll have that on the website. If you go to Notfreeamerica.com on the top of the website, you'll see the hotline. It's a toll-free number, you can call it, and you can report instances of civil rights violations. We will call you back. We will have an attorney call you and we will analyze your case and if possible, we'll help you. That's something that my company does. It's done it before the Coronavirus and will do it after the Coronavirus. But right now, most of our calls are related to, you guessed it, CV-19. I want to tell you about one of those calls.

It's important to note that we still have investigators investigating these cases and when these calls come in, they're not fully vetted. However, I don't have any reason to disbelieve this person and more appropriately, I've heard it dozens and dozens of times over. So I'll introduce you to this woman and we'll call her Sandy. She went to a hospital in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a large hospital, one that is well known in well-respected.

And when she went to that hospital she brought her mother in who is showing signs of a flu-like illness. Mom was evaluated and tested and sent home. Two days later, she found out that she was positive for Corona virus. And she had labored breathing. She returned to the hospital that day and was admitted. She went on a respirator for 24 hours but then was brought off. And that made the family hopeful, because the longer you're on a respirator, the less likely you're going to come off the respirator.

These are facts. We know this. So she came off within 24 hours, but she has certain health ailments that make her more prone to having to go back on a respirator and the disease hasn't passed. So she is not out of the woods. She wanted to go home. The hospital said, “No. Her daughter called the hospital and demanded to have her mother released and the hospital said, “No.” A public health emergency, they claimed, gave them the right to say no.

I want you to understand something. The health problems I told you about with her mother, they're serious and they're respiratory and no one really believes that the mother is going to make it through. This disease is killing healthy people. We know this. So there's a great deal of certainty in that family that these may be the last days. And so that family wants to make a choice to be together. Now, the daughter is willing to quarantine in her home. She doesn't want to expose anybody. She just wants mom to come home. Mom wants to come home to die with her family. Her family wants her to come home to die with them and the daughter is willing to take the chance that she might herself become infected so that she doesn't have to have her mom suffer the horror of dying without her family. The hospital said, “No.” And the hospital has the last word because the hospital's in control… because this is a public health emergency.

What are your rights right now? Do you have the right to die with dignity with your family? What's happening right now in the United States of America? And why aren't we talking about it more… vis-a-vis what happens when you go into the hospital? We believe that hundreds of thousands of people are going to die from this disease, which means millions of people will be infected, which means many of us will be. Many of the people listening to this podcast tonight will find themselves infected with Covid 19. What does it mean to go to the hospital? What does it mean to get tested?

What does it mean to have a positive test? What happens to you? Well, USA Today reports under new government health guidelines… pregnant women who become infected with the current virus will be separated from their children at birth. Understandable… I guess… public health emergency and certainly don't want to risk the child contracting a respiratory disease, but what safeguards are in place to ensure that that infant is going to be protected in a hospital overrun with coronavirus patients and bursting at the seams to just continue operating? What safeguards are in place? How might a pregnant mother feel to have that child ripped away from her and not know where the child is?

We have to talk about these things so that we can better prepare as people. Because for me,

I don't know that I want to die alone and I certainly wouldn't want my mom or dad to die alone. I relate to this potential client so much because it's a basic question of human rights. It's a basic question of human dignity. We have a series of choices we make in our lives, for sure, and part of those choices are about developing a family, a group of friends… a community that celebrates in the good times, rallies in the bad mourns its losses in the end. We are becoming a very different people. The question is, will we remember who we actually are?

If you're going to the hospital, just understand, ask questions. What registries are you being entered into? Who's keeping track of your information? What information is being tracked and at what point are you no longer able to leave? Questions you wouldn't have imagined necessary in America four weeks ago are questions every single one of us should be thinking about right now.

Join me tomorrow when we talk about religious liberty… Sunday, how are churches reacting? How are they being impacted and what's happening to pastors who stand up and say, “I want my flock together.” Tomorrow. Thank you for joining us on not free America.