By Sokha Ou-Uun
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I am what I am because of what I have experienced. The debate
about our health care brings back one of my sad memory. When I first came to
the US, I lived in Florida and got my health care at a county health center.
One day while I was waiting for a doctor, a man walked in with blood on his face from
what seemed to be a head wound.
He was turned away because the county clinic can only provide
well care needs such as vaccinations or something like that. Disappointed, the man walked outside and sat on a
bench. It was Winter, cold but bearable. Having seen so many miseries in
Cambodia, the country I left behind, I could not just ignore this man. I walked
up to him, and asked why he did not go to a hospital. He told me that he did not
have any transportation.
Of course, at that time, I had no
idea how the health care systems worked in the US; I thought that a person with
injury would just go to a hospital and he or she would be taken care of. So I
volunteered to drive him to the hospital in my clunky. We arrived at one
hospital, but he was turned away. The next hospital did the same thing. We
visited three hospitals, but the results were all the same. The man finally
gave up and asked me to drop him off at a bus stop, and that was where I left
him with blood already hardened on his face.
At that time, I could not
comprehend everything, so I did not know why that man could not get help. I did
understand enough such that many years later, I realized that he did not have
insurance and his injury was not life threatening.
I thank God for letting me witness it. Otherwise, I would never know the difference. Every day, I am
very thankful that I do not have to go through what that man did.
