Before I launch , I need to admit a few things: I'm from Pennsylvania and fairly middle-class. The story I'm about to relate leaves me wide-open to charges that "I can't understand." I admit that, but it doesn't make me any less furious. I'm discussing one specific story here , which makes it statistically useless. GrannyDoc, if you are out there , there is not one cite to be found here. Follow me below the fold.
Although I am living in a middle-class situation in Pennsylvania, through the magic of the Internet I have a friend who is very very poor and living in SE Oklahoma, near Durant. She is either Misissippi Choctaw or Chickasaw, I forget . In any case, she can trace her family back to the Trail of Tears. She comes out of generational poverty, and a sort of hopelessness that I'm trying to combat. There are problems that I can't even begin to figure out , such as : the church gives away free food on day X, but they are 10 miles away , and she only has enough gas to get there , no money to buy gas and the food stamps for that month are gone. In the interest of full disclosure, although I'm living in a middle-class situation, and was brought up with middle-class values , I am currently unemployed and fairly broke . However, no matter how little I have, she has less, and so I give what I can when I can.
Now, she has an Indian card, and goes to an Indian clinic. We hadn't talked in awhile. She told me that she had an ingrown big toenail. I've had them. You go to your doctor - maybe they send you to a podiatrist, it gets taken care of. She went to the Indian clinic, they pulled the toenail. The whole thing. Down to the root. That's when my mouth started to drop open. Now, she has some sort of toenail fungus. Fine . There are anti-fungal creams and sprays for that , but they aren't covered by insurance and she doesn't have the money -- so next week or the week after they are pulling the rest of her toenails. If she has a cavity - rather than filling it, as I would assume, being middle-class and all, -- they pull the tooth.
Is anyone else noticing a pattern here? Now, I understand that medication costs money, that fillings cost money, that crowns are probably out of the question - but how is this not substandard care? Unless you are a hockey player, it is very hard to be competitive in any field in America with missing teeth.
I have called. I have called the Rural Heath Administration. The very nice woman there told me that they don't handle Indian Health - that I should call the Indian Health Service. I called them, but they don't have any dealings with policy-making , just day-to-day operations. They told me to call my congressperson. She's lovely, but it didn't happen in her district - and the Congressman from the district in OK doesn't want to hear from me because I'm not a constituent. Besides, I'm not as interested in this clinic as I am in the policy that sees this as an acceptable option. The clinic workers, I'm sure, are overworked and underpaid and doing the best they can with what they have. The subcommittees dealing with health care think it's an Indian Affairs matter - and the subcommittees dealing with Indian Affairs think it's a health care matter . The classic runaround.
Wasn't pulling people's toenails out a form of torture? Or was that only fingernails? Yes, President Obama made a great speech last night , and I hate to crap in the daisy field, so to speak, but if we can't help the poorest of the poor , the very folks who need Government to do for them what they can't do for themselves -- isn't that the fundament of any progressive politics?