This is something which is more apt in a Third World rather than the most powerful and one of the richest (if not the richest) country in the world.
A surveillance camera footage shows a woman collapsing and dying on a hospital emergency room floor and then lying for an hour while staff walk past.
The video shows 49-year-old Esmin Green keeling forward in a psychiatric emergency room in Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, where she was admitted to treat agitation and psychosis on June 19.
Green is shown clutching at her stomach, thrashing on the floor before lying face-first on the tiled floor with her upper body lodged in the corner space between two sets of chairs.
Two other patients move around the room, security guards walk past and one even stares at Green for about 20 seconds but the woman is left prone until one of the patients gets help after about an hour has elapsed.
Now this tape is being used to sue the hospital.
At one end of the spectrum you have the best health care but which is prohibitively expensive and maybe only those with insurance can possible afford. And at the other extreme you have the uninsured and hospitals where conditions are abject and neglect is routine.
Hopefully something good comes out of all this.
