Back to business.
Better to discuss what I'm doing to help a few desperate Americans than the intractable crisis in the Middle East.
Some of you might be following the hospital volunteer work I recently started. I work under the direction of a friend who is a surgeon and oncologist.
You may also know about a woman named Sara. She was a patient of my oncologist friend.
She was a patient. She is no longer. Sara died.
I had been trying to secure Avastin for her from a very uncooperative insurance company. It's now moot because dear Sara died the other night. The cancer must have simply overwhelmed her tired, gaunt 85 pound frame.
I'm glad I had the privilege to know her. I'm honored that my friend entrusted me with the task of battling the insurance company. I'm sad that she died. Mostly I grieve for her lovely family.
But truthfully, I'm also chagrined that now I won't have the opportunity to do what I do best. I was gearing up for a ferocious fight. I was preparing to tell you every miserable, sordid detail about how one wages holy war on a merciless insurance company. A primer, if you will.
A fight for what, some of you may be scratching your heads. For fucking medication. Shouldn't medication ordered by your physician be a basic human right? It isn't my friends. This is the status quo, you are free to ignore this reality until it slaps you in the face--and it will. Read what so many Kossacks write about their own experiences.
Why in the world do Americans tolerate being put in the demeaning position of having to beg for lifesaving medications? Damned if I know.
Let me tell you why. Because health care is not for Sara or you or me, it's about profits for the pharmaceutical industry and the insrance companies:
The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to reap a windfall from a surprisingly lucrative niche market: drugs for poor people.
And analysts expect the benefits to show up in many of the quarterly financial results that drug makers will begin posting this week.
The windfall, which by some estimates could be $2 billion or more this year, is a result of the transfer of millions of low-income people into the new Medicare Part D drug program that went into effect in January. Under that program, as it turns out, the prices paid by insurers, and eventually the taxpayer, for the medications given to those transferred are likely to be higher than what was paid under the federal-state Medicaid programs for the poor.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I'm certain of one thing. I'm going to have many other battles to describe. This is America. You fight for your health care. Health care is still not guaranteed, but a fight certainly is.
My friend resisted telling me my very first patient had died. I suppose I'm glad Sara's death happened at night because I wouldn't have wanted to be around at the end. We had forged a non-verbal bond. We exchanged winks, smiles and shrugs since the sweet woman never did manage to get untethered from the respirator. I worried about her. I wondered what would happen when the insurance issued its inevitable denial.
As far as our collapsed health care system is concerned, I learned during the brief time we spent together, about her cancer, cancer care, cancer politics, and that if you don't have excellent financial resources as a cancer patient in the United States, you damn well better have a strong and healthy family. You'll no doubt spend a lot of time fighting. The media is doing a totally inadequate job of reporting to the American people the atrocities and I use that word advisedly, being inflicted against sick people by insurance companies across this country.
The sad spectacle of Denny Hastert hospitalized in the presidential suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital for a skin infection should enrage you. It simply highlights in technicolor the chasm between what they give themselves and the shit we are thrown. And frankly, we have only ourselves to blame for this deplorable situation. We tolerate it. We permit it. Once you or a loved one becomes entangled in the American health care maelstrom, you won't find stories about Denny Hastert very funny. Ask Sara's family. Ask almost anyone--even a truth-telling Republican.
Why are these God damn, motherfucking insurance companies able to squirm out of fulfilling their contractual obligations? They do this for one reason, because they can. They know most Americans don't have a clue about what they're entitled to. Even if they do, insurance companies understand that enforcement is time-consuming, debilitating and expensive.
Debilitating is a kind word for what it is like to deal with such monstrous institutions. Particularly insofar as the mission is to enhance the bottom line, not your well-being. Be warned, deceive, confuse, delay and deny are part and parcel I am sure, of the whispered--and actual health insurance business model.
Moving along to one other health care revulsion. You know that since more and more Americans are uninsured they postpone obtaining health care. When they finally become so sick that delay and deny is no longer a solution, what do you think they do? They go to the emergency room. So guess what's coming into the emergency room? Really ill people. People with advanced cancer.
I'm going to spend more time on this sad American reality. Suffice it to say for now, I'm seeing this with my own eyes. Let's just call it what it is: Mega cancers. Little problems become big problems. This is what frequently happens when you're either too poor, too scared or uninsured and don't seek prompt medical attention.
Mr. Bush and his idiot consumer directed healthcare otherwise known as Health Savings Accounts will make this problem even worse.
Emergency rooms deliver the most expensive healthcare in the entire rotten system.
America, July, 2006.