Excellus’ insulting emergency room advertisements

It has been getting under my skin ever since it was released. That’s probably because, as a new daddy, more of my time is spent in front of a television, watching my son play with his rings and cups than I spent before. I just can’t really avoid television like I used to.

Regardless, the basic premise is that people come to emergency rooms unnecessarily:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLZeFFzkQrQ[/youtube]

Ok. The premise is entirely sound. But let’s not forget that the health care industry relies on us to be strung out on them in order to maintain profitability. We’ve spent decades being pumped full of drugs for things we didn’t even realize were wrong with us. We are constantly bombarded with warnings about H1N1, bird flu, and swine flu – all of which, yes, begin with “acute stuffiness.”

Now, we are greeted with billboards, posters and television commercials telling us all that we are overreacting children because we are as a society behaving precisely as the industry wanted us to. Because of course: emergency room visits are expensive. And that’s cutting into Excellus’ bottom line. Can’t have that, now can we?

Mind you: emergency room visits are expensive because health care is expensive. Health care is expensive because the demand for care is high. Demand for care is high because… yeah. Exactly.

Health care is in fact so expensive that many of us don’t have the money to even pay for insurance. So what do those people do when they get sick? That’s right. They go to the emergency room.

You’re not just an overreacting child. You’re a broke-ass, overreacting child. And apparently, you are a nuisance to Excellus and all the rich people with money for insurance. Move along.