Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.
Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.
The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.
Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.
By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.
Hours later, she was dead.
Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.
But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.
She did her part keeping the hospital beds available for more profitable patients. It’s the American way. As long as our hospitals (and government) prioritize profits over health, there will be no end to these stories.
I keep saying single-payer healthcare is better than what we have now and get attacked for it. “I’m fine - you’re fine - my kids are fine! Stop saying you want everything for free!” Just because we are ok doesn’t mean everyone else is, you selfish prick.
Remind them it ain’t free. I pay a really small amount of my income tax for this health care.
I mean. All-in, my total income tax is 1% lower than yours on the same income, and I get the healthcare thrown in, and our lower 10% now get free dental care, and now it’s covering more than fillings and cleanings, and now we’re talking vision care … But yeah, just efficient. Not free.