This Doc Stoked the COVID Crisis. These Women Are Paying the Price

Even as the coronavirus pandemic ravages her state of Idaho, Kitrina Marcroft has a different problem: an aggressive form of bladder cancer.

But surgery will have to wait, she explained in an interview to The Daily Beast this past week. There are too many COVID-19 patients, almost all of them unvaccinated, and not enough beds in Boise, Idaho, hospitals for other patients.

Likewise, Angela Housley said her 80-year-old mother was turned away from a McCall, Idaho, hospital during a metabolic emergency for fear elderly patients would be at risk of contracting COVID inside, she said in an interview.

“It’s just not working—our system is not working,” Housley told The Daily Beast, though she made clear she didn’t question the hospital’s decision.

Hospital officials did not return a request for comment about the two women’s stories. But they match up with the kinds of medical treatment that health-care officials say may be delayed under a form of rationed care the state recently authorized thanks to a deluge of COVID-19 patients.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-idaho-doctor-must-have-missed-the-whole-do-no-harm-bit?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4