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Ryan Gamlin spent a decade on the enterprise facet of well being care — working with insurance coverage corporations. That was earlier than he went to medical college. Now, he’s an anesthesiologist in Los Angeles and on the entrance strains combating COVID-19.
It’s an expertise he described as “scary, in a way that I never expected to be scared, going to work.”
He was frightened sooner or later final summer season, too, when a California wildfire got here inside ft of the hospital the place he was working. But then, a fleet of firetrucks confirmed as much as defend the hospital.
“City, county, park service, forest service, new trucks, old trucks, unmarked trucks,” Gamlin tweeted.
These days, with medical gear from masks to ventilators in brief provide, he’s been pondering again to that have.
“I realized the fundamental difference between public safety and health care. Public safety is built on latent capacity,” he mentioned. “We pay for people and equipment to stand idle, overprepared for emergencies.”
For Episode three, we spoke with Gamlin about his experiences on each the enterprise and medical facet of well being care.
“We’ve left no latent capacity in health care,” he mentioned. “Everyone was working at their maximum,” even earlier than COVID-19, he wrote in a Twitter thread.
“And some part of the tragedy that’s now unfolding in this country is because of that. Because we let health care become a business. And because businesses don’t keep a hundred extra fire trucks around, their crews trained and ready, just in case.”
“SEASON-19” of “An Arm and a Leg” is a co-production of Kaiser Health News and Public Road Productions.
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