Republicans for small Health Care

     That's right, I meant to spell it that way.  It would make a good slogan for them.  Isn't it shocking the quality of potential leadership the Republicans have come up with.  I can think of many honest, principled, peaceful people I know that would do a good job--and I'm sure you can too.
     Coming back to health care, I heard a presentation on the radio today by Steffi Woolhandler MD about the problems with Obamacare and why we need a Single Payer Health Plan.  If the Supreme Court allows Obamacare to go forward, 23 million people will be uninsured.  Many of the policies will have high deductibles and co pays: after all, the big private insurance companies helped write the bill, why shouldn't they benefit.
     Steffi Woolhandler, by the way, got her start here in Oakland at Highland Hospital, our public hospital.  One of the things she was first involved in was opposing the practice of dumping.  When private hospitals had emergency room patients who couldn't pay, they would send them to Highland in an ambulance, even if they had appendicitis or pneumonia or some other medical conditions.  It was young doctors  like Steffi in Oakland and other cities that led the campaign that stopped dumping.
     When I was in Chicago at Northwestern Medical School, almost all of the patients in the hospital where white.  The few black people who came to the medical center were brought in because they had unusual diseases and were "good teaching cases."   The vast number of black people went to Chicago's Cook County Hospital.  When we we're learning physical diagnosis, there were certain things we couldn't do with white patients, such as breast, vaginal, and rectal exams.  Guess where we went to do those:  Cook County.  It was degrading to the patients and to us as well--to be forced to participate in that.
     Back to our current time, Steffi is one of the leaders of Physicians for a National Health Plan.   I highly recommend their web site PNHP.org.  There's a lot of good information about how the insurance industry benefits from Obamacare, and how Single Payer is both a great improvement and highly feasible.

Labyrinths

    Yesterday I was hiking up in the Oakland Hills and took a photo of a labyrinth constructed by anonymous folks over the years.  It reminded me of our so called health care 'system' that Tea Party folks say they don't want taken away.   What system?   The one that tens of millions don't have?   The one that's like a labyrinth with obstacles at every turn?

   Let me tell you a sad story, one that should never have happened.   I'm going to disguise a few details for confidentiality reasons.   A few years ago a young adult in his mid 20s--we'll call him W--a very ethical person, eking out a living as meditation teacher, someone who ate thoughtfully, and who like many his age had no health insurance, began to have intermittent fevers and some transitory, mysterious symptoms and joint pains.  He also had some chronic dental problems.  After a couple of months and some more testing, one day he received a call from his clinic saying that he had a positive blood culture, that it could be dangerous,  and that he should go to the hospital immediately.  As it happened an MD friend was there and W played the message for him.  The MD reinforced that he should go to the hospital urgently, that the infection could spread to different places.  W said he would think about it, try to get things together, and maybe go the next day.  He wasn't seen again for two or three days, and people assumed that he had was in the hospital.  Then a friend from work came over saying that the hadn't been around.  The friend and a roommate went back to his room and found him semiconscious on the floor and paralyzed on one side.  The bacteria had formed a small clot on a heart valve which broke loose and blocked an artery in the brain, and he had a stroke.   I'm sure that had he not been worried about the expenses of the hospital and and about losing his meagre wages, he would have gone to the hospital and likely have avoided the stroke.  

     Think of all those people with jobs that don't have benefits: the waitress at your favorite restaurant, the guy at the 7-11 or the gas station, the clerk at the photo shop.  Regular people who deserve better.  I've worked 35 years in the current so called 'system' and it doesn't work that well for a lot of people with insurance, let alone those without.  I'm sure you all know someone with a 'preexisting condition' who can't get health insurance because of it--or who has to pay exorbitant rates.   We need a single payer system and universal coverage.  All of the industrialized countries have some version of it, and none is perfect; but none of them has the disgrace of millions of citizens without insurance.  Checkout Physicians for a National Health Plan--a lot of good information there, and you can find out ways to get involved.

"I don’t hold my babies after they’re four months old."

      I never cease to be amazed at the words I hear in the examining room.  As I recall, I walked into the room and the baby, wrapped in her blanket, was by herself up on the exam table, while her mother was sitting quietly in a chair.  I thought maybe she was tired and asked her if that was the case, but she said no.  She didn’t strike me as not wanting the baby, as I sometimes feel, and she didn’t seem depressed.  Rather, she gave the impression of someone who didn’t expect much from life.  I don’t remember exactly what led to what, but after a while she said to me, “I don’t hold my babies after they are four months old.”   A very stark and unsettling thing to hear.

     It wasn’t hard to figure that she had suffered a difficult childhood, like many of the parents I see from Mexico.   She was a child that her parents could not afford to feed and clothe, and so she had been shipped off to some relative, then another, and another.   Eventually she came as a teen to the US to seek a better life.  I empathized with her, talked to her some about the connection between her own life and how she felt about babies, and that more holding was good for them.  Whether I was able to connect her to therapy or even talk to a social worker I don’t know, but I won’t ever forget her words.  I hope that that moment of someone listening to her pain made a little difference.