I've been so poor I had to try out that "free healthcare" and it nearly killed me. It may be free in the sense of little or no monetary cost but if anyone has a mental image of gleaming hospitals full of doctors waiting to serve patients they are sadly mistaken. Patients are forced to trade time instead of money for their healthcare, assuming they can get it all.

When you are forced into the bottom tier of the medical system you're competing with every other patient with a complaint from constipation to gunshot wounds. These hospitals do not have unlimited resources and triage patients based on need.

The result is someone like me who had an upper respiratory infection slowly getting worse and turning into pneumonia can sit for a day or two in the emergency room waiting for a shot.

I don't know if you're ever had a full blown case of pneumonia but as someone who did and still has scarring in their lungs it's no joke. You slowly drown from the buildup in your lungs and there's nothing you can do but hope the antibiotics outrace the infection before you can no longer breathe.

Does sitting around Ben Taub Hospital in a plastic chair for more than a day sound like "living a pretty good life" to you? I assure you, it is not.