The unapologetic privilege of the article is all kinds of disgusting.

Basically, it justifies the idea that certain people - in this case, White professionals with ties to the medical establishment - deserve special medical treatment. This is presented in a matter-of-fact way, and the whole premise of the article assumes that the reader herself is a member of the same privileged elite.

More tellingly, the article totally ignores the flip side - what about those who <b>do not</b> have those special privileges?

Speaking as one of those folks, I can tell you, it's very different.

I'm an African American union carpenter, and when I broke my ankle while building the US District Courthouse in Lower Manhattan in September 1995, I <b>absolutely did not</b> get treated anywhere as solicitously as this rich guy did.

Hell, I didn't even get the same basic medical care he did!

Despite having essentially the same injury the man did in the article, I didn't get a cervical collar or a backboard - the FDNY paramedics unceremoniously placed me on a gurney, with no special precautions about any possible back injuries, and off I went to Beekman Downtown Hospital.

I spent 3 hours in the hallway just waiting for X rays - and when I finally got them, the technician was very rude and basically treated me like a side of beef (except he would have been more polite to the beef).

Then, I spent another 2 hours waiting for a doctor (the surgeon on duty was busy dealing with a homeless African American man who'd been beaten by the cops and who's broken bones were being treated <b>while he was handcuffed and under armed guard</b>

I could hear his anguished screams from the treatment room - and the cops telling him <i>"shut the fuck up, skell!"</i> [<b>"Skell"</b> is a racial slur New York City cops use to refer to Black or Latino suspects].

The only person in the hospital who was solicitous at all was an elderly Chinese American woman who was a hospital volunteer (she was the only person who bothered to ask if I needed any family members called and she called my mom and my girlfriend for me).

When the beaten Black prisoner had finally received the bare minimum of care mandated by NYC Department of Corrections guidelines and could be handed off to the cops to be hauled off to the bullpen, it was finally my turn to see the doctor.

She hastily splinted my leg, gave me a prescription for percaset and, about 10 minutes after I got in the treatment room, told me <i>"You'd better find an orthopedic surgeon to set the bones for you"</i>

After that, I got issued a set of crutches by a technician (but nobody bothered to show me how to use them, I had to figure that out for myself) and I was discharged and sent off into the night.

Fortunately, my girlfriend came to get me from the hospital, and I had enough money on me to pay for a cab ride from Chinatown (where the hospital was) to my home in West Harlem [at 1995 prices, that was a $ 25 taxi ride].

The next day, I had to hit the yellow pages to find a doctor who would set the bones for me - eventually, I found a surgeon at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital (every other surgeon I called refused to take the case, because New York State Workers Compensation doesn't pay them a high enough fee to set a broken ankle).

4 days later, I took a cab to Columbia Presybeterian, my leg was set by two medical students (the doctor was too busy to bother with a low fee case like mine, so he had a couple of his students do the surgery and he signed the reports later) and, as soon as the anesthetic wore off, I was again, unceremoniously discharged and had to make my way home with only my girlfriend to assist me.

That's the flipside of privilege.

Incidentally, pretty much every contact I've had with the medical establishment in my life has been like this - unlike Ms Brown and her husband, me and people like me are seen as less than, and not worthy of the special care that people like her and her husband receive.

This reminds me of the privileges of having a family menber or family friend that is a cop.

You know they actually have cards that each cop gets to hand out for this very purpose. My father was actually a patrol officer who died on the job and its disgusting when I have seen family members being treated differently by cops because they make it very visible within their cars that my father was a cop who was killed on the job. Its even more bizarre and sickening to me when people try to rationalize these sorts of privileges, "so and so was nice enough to give you a card you should carry it in your wallet", "its a police courtesy a sign of respect", bull shit!

It's a form of social inequality and needs to be called out for what it is!

Poor people will not get equal healthcare until we're deep into socialism. The mechanism that allows for some to pay (in whatever way) more than others has to be removed. And of course you have the whole issue of the fact that rich people hate poor people to begin with.

The one thing that really showed how privileged he is that it didn't even bother him that they cut away his jeans. I'd be pissed off to have to go out and buy a new pair of $20 work jeans.

Also, who on earth gets to have surgery in a hospital. I live in Canada where we have 'socialized' healthcare and didn't get access to these kinds of services when I could have used them to repair tendons in my ankle.

While unequal of treatment in general, based on structural legacies, and just seconds of judgment based on class, or perceived social class, i.e. the way you speak, look, level of perceived education, and importantly race, all with their corresponding detrimental prejudices perpetuated in the culture, are ubiquitous features of our strikingly unjust society, the wide disparities in the health care system are well documented. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_disparities http://www.laprogressive.com/rankism/study-links-poorer-hospital-care-to-racial-segregation/

Some social arenas this is more open than others. For instance, with the police, this is completely evident, in fact just what geographical location you happen to be in puts you into a favored or disfavored category, with extreme differences of treatment (including if you get shot or not!) Historically cops have even been used to enforce keeping certain "types" of people based on race, from crossing over into the privileged "white" part of town.

In the medical profession, I know its a common practice for doctors to ask you what kind of work you do, what is your profession, etc. I believe this is part of their training, though, as they make certain inferences from what kind of job you do to your level of stress and other factors which could be relevant to your health evaluation. But, there is no denying that the level of connection you make (consciously or not) with that professional class results in better or sub-standard care. While the blatant racism is not legally codified anymore,it still the reality, with shadow of "Tuskegee" remaining large.

However, lets not forget that the most blatant discrimination is built into the profit centered system: you have to have enough money or a good job that provides you with good insurance to even get the basic treatment that you may need. An estimated 45,000 die due to this disparity resting directly on class status. "Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found..." http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE58G6W520090917 What we have is a society that basically institutionalizes mass murder for the sake of super profit for the few.

But, if you do have access to health care, one thing that they say makes a difference is if you become your own advocate, and demand the care that you know you should get. However, I've read studies where despite this, the culture accepting a diminished view of the humanity of a poor person of color, still trumps. I read a news article about the story of a black man who was a laborer getting dismissed with only pain meds for the exact same condition that a white professional received knee surgery for, from the same doctor. He complained and still was not treated, and had to go to find another doctor to get the appropriate treatment, to take his health needs seriously. I read it in the SF Chron little over a year ago, but can't find the story online now (although this is just one out of many such stories pointing to the very divided and unequal nature of our basic institutions, along lines of traditional patterns of oppression and exploitation.

Does anyone seriously think that anything short of a social, political, and economic, revolution will uproot and get rid of these injustices?