I believe that healthcare is a basic human right. I believe that everyone has the right to the same access I have as a healthcare professional. My coverage sucks compared to the coverage I used to have back in the day, but it is still better than anyone elses, and I pay less for it."Medicine needs to be the exception to the free market rule. It's late, so I'm
not going to write a dissertation, this is something we can discuss over time,
we'll both be back and have ample opportunity. I'll just say that I've seen it
(profit-driven health care) in action as an employee and a supervisor at HCA
facilities, and that experience would probably convert the most ardent
non-believer.
Everybody covers for their own. That's just human nature.
And some things, like health care and assuring that standards and rules are
followed are just too important to be left to laiszez faire internal oversights.
Bridge building is one of those areas. And so is medicine. Any area where the
public is at the mercy, and the outcome can have life-or-death consequences
merits oversight. That meets the standard in my book."
That said, I will go on record as saying that I would be willing to pay a bit more and give up a bit of my access if we could have coverage for everyone. Fifty million uninsured is too steep a social price to pay for the opportunity for a few, like the Frists, to get rich. It is unconscionable that in this country, that has so much wealth, we leave children to suffer.
In my state, Missouri, we have seen Medicaid coverage cut to the bone, and dental care is no longer provided. Oral problems ripple through the child. Children with oral disease have more problems in school, and when they get sick with seasonal bugs, they get sicker. A child with a toothache and a gaping cavity might have to wait eight months or longer to see a dentist in a public health clinic. That is unconscionable. My kids were always seen either day of, or the next day.
An aside: The Kids and I landed in Kansas City in time for Tyler's freshman year, so the children could go to high-school in one place. I was a brat, too, and that was important to me. So we have had the same family dentist since Tyler, who will be 23 in about 4 months, was 15. The dentist has pictures of every patient who has never had a cavity on the wall of the main hallway to the treatment rooms. There are a bunch of little kids under eight, and Tyler's graduation photo.
Back on topic...We all end up paying when the uninsured get sicker and sicker and sicker, until they end up in the emergency room and then the ICU, racking up thousands of dollars in bills that won't be paid and that will haunt the patient or family for years and keep them from joining that ownership society we keep hearing about, because an uncovered illness or accident can wreck credit.
But a free market approach won't work, because there is too much incentive to cheat. Counterfeit drugs are already a problem, and are making their way to reputable pharmacies. There is the flap about the donor liver going to the wrong recipient and the cover-up that has since ensued. The examples are plenty.
I live in Kansas City and I worked at Research Medical Center. Robert Courtney dispensed his diluted chemo compounds through his Research Tower Pharmacy, to patients I personally saw fade away before my eyes. His motive? To give the money to his church.
My point is that without regulation, and regulations that carry the threat of sanctions at that, human nature is to push the envelope. Even with the threat of sanctions some still defy those regulations and cheat.
Before regulation, before the FDA, "patent medicines" did much harm. Many contained such health-building substances as mercury, cocaine, or heroin...It wasn't a bad thing that snake-oil salesmen were driven out of business.
The FDA kept Laetril off the market. Laetril turned out to be a dangerous alternative that didn't work. The FDA kept Thalidomide off the American market. People complained bitterly in both instances. But we did not see Thalidomide babies in our society. The FDA as a strong government regulatory agency has been undermined in recent years, and research has become the provence of pharmaceutical companies. But they still manage to pull the dangerous drugs. Vioxx, Rezulin, Baycol, Seldane...The list goes on.
I maintain that health care should be regulated for the same reasons that bridge construction is. It is in the publics best interest to regulate certain things and levy heavy sanctions when they are breached. And it is a ludicrous notion that patients can "shop for" the best deal on healthcare. How the hell can you shop for an emergency situation. If I ever answered the phone in the ER and the voice on the other end told me that they were comparison shopping the emergency rooms in the area for cost and average wait time because they weren't insured and they wanted to be prepared with that knowledge ahead of time, I am not sure what I would have done. Probably transfered them to the billing office and turned around and said "Hey Guys! You'll never believe the phone call I just answered..."
Health care is not a commodity to be doled out based on ones ability to pay, or ones membership in an exclusive club, the club of the insured. Access to quality healthcare is a basic human right, or at least it should be, in a truly compassionate society. Period. I say that as one of the links in the provider chain. I work a sweet gig now, but I haven't always. I have worked in public health clinics and social services outreach mobile clinics. I've gone into the Barrios in Tucson to immunize and do well-child checks door-to-door. I've seen Arkansas poverty up close and personal. I've "taken it to the streets" with the Whitebird Clinic in Eugene, Oregon and served the street people and junkies. The first time we lived in Wichita, I was employed by the Sedgewick County Health Department in their "PoP Project" (Prevention of Prematurity) and had good results. The program was still percolating along when I returned to Wichita a decade later and worked in the stat-lab in the Wesley Medical Center ER. When I worked at the Samuel U. Rodgers Community Health Clinic, which served a large immigrant and refugee population through the Don Bosco Center, I could tell you how to collect a clean-catch urine specimen in at least a dozen languages, and explain the blood collection process in that many and a couple more.
It will not be long before business leaders start the hue and cry for a single payer health system. When the cost of premiums for health insurance starts to affect the premiums of stockholders, perhaps we will see some change in our healthcare delivery system. I just had a routine doctors appointment yesterday, and my physician and I were discussing the single payer option that is rapidly becoming the elephant in the room. The AMA only represents about 32% of the physicians in this country. They don't have the power they think they do, and many doctors, like my internist, favor a single-payer system.
I have already gone on record. I am willing to sacrifice a little if it will bring those with no coverage at all, under the tent. That, to me, just seems like the human thing to do.
