Written late evening March 29, 2011
Note: I am usually a compliant person. I have been told to rest my left wrist for a week. I not only sprained that wrist but injured the soft tissue as well. But I have taken my wrist brace off and here I am typing. I simply won’t be able to sleep if I do not write this. You’ll see what I mean, I hope. Keep reading.
I have no idea how to begin this post. I shouldn’t even be writing, but I must. I have to. I need to “get it out”. By “it” I don’t know if I mean anger, frustration, disillusionment, disgust, sadness, confusion, disbelief, helplessness, or all of the above. Here’s what’s happened.
Sunday afternoon I was reaching for something in the garage. Just about the time I realized how far I was reaching and how stupid it was, it was too late. In slow motion, just like I’ve heard it happens, I fell. Three steps down onto the concrete. As I was falling I was worrying about my head hitting that concrete, so I was trying to prevent that. Somehow I managed. But I fell on my left side, landing on my elbow first and then the outside of my left wrist. At first I was too stunned to get up. After a few minutes I was able to crawl to the door and get inside the house. Although my arm was hurting pretty intensely, I took ibuprofen, did the icing routine and wrapped it. It didn’t appear anything was broken and after a while I could mostly move my wrist. I knew I was going to be sore. But, given I had stupidly caused myself to fall; I didn’t think I could complain. All seemed okay, or mostly okay.
Until this morning. This morning my wrist was beginning to swell and was quite red. It felt as if heat were actually being generated from within. So off to Urgent Care I went. My doctor’s office does not have an x-ray machine on site. And no need going to the emergency room. I would wait longer and, if I understand correctly, it would be more costly for my insurance. (I always try and imagine that we had no coverage and then decide, would we go to the doctor’s office? And when we do go, I try to imagine that we would have to write a check for the entire cost. I think if everyone did that we would all spend the insurance dollars carefully and appreciatively and we would all win.)
Anyway, back to the wrist. I’m in the examining room, after a relatively brief wait and completing the necessary paperwork. The guy isn’t sure if there is a fracture or not. So an x-ray is in order, of course. As he is leaving the room to make the arrangements, I am instantly angry and frustrated. I start to choke up and cry. Allan’s tries to reassure me. But, I tell him, “It just can’t be right. It CAN’T be right!!” “What? he asks. “The fact that I can be so distracted thinking about things, so careless as to do something stupid, and have insurance coverage that allows me to get my wrist checked out. BUT an elderly woman with colitis can’t get the medicine she needs!!”
Bear with me and I’ll fill you in. This morning I found an email a friend who is my age sent late last night. Her elderly mother lives about 4-4 ½ hours away. This woman has severe colitis. She had an appointment April 11th, but has been so sick she finally asked to be taken to the Duke ER. She arrived at 2:00 PM. When my friend went to bed at 11:00 last night she still had not received word of the situation. The medicine her mother needs costs $1,500 a month. Yes, you read correctly. $1,500 a month. (Sorry to say that is not the most expensive I have encountered. I know a woman whose medication cost $2,500 monthly. And that was 6 years ago! What must it cost now??)
This woman can’t pay the $1,500 a month. The family, even together, can’t give enough each month to pay for the medicine. They have tried to get help from drug assistance programs. All to no avail. My friend’s brother has written his mother’s Congressman. (Do I have to capitalize that word? Based on the response, it seems way, way too respectful.) No help. So…her doctor gives her a sulfa-based drug. That drug has affected her kidney function. My friend said it is all making her mother deathly ill.
By the time I leave the medical facility I am angry. Very angry. My family will tell you that I am rarely angry. But I am good and angry! I tell Allan I hope no one says anything to me about how much s/he is against healthcare any time soon. I absolutely challenge anyone to say this makes our country great. An elderly woman, who most likely did not get the educational opportunities my family insisted on for me, so does not have the medical insurance coverage I do, can live in America and NOT get the medicine she needs? And not only that, but she must be given one that causes a second serious health issue? That makes us look great? Especially when we spend so much time bragging about being founded on “Christian” principles? Really? (Well, actually, if you read an early post of mine, you will know I don’t see that point of view. In fact, I am quite sick of hearing it.)
I’ve heard all the “arguments” against healthcare. Here are just a few.
ü 80% of Americans are covered. That's pretty good.
I would have to research the number for myself. But, even if it is correct, that is good enough for those of us who call ourselves Christians? And what if Jesus had thought dying for 80% of us was good enough? How would we feel about that? Especially if we discovered that someone in our family was NOT in that special 80%? And what about His second great command to love others as we love ourselves? He didn’t say love 80% of others as we love ourselves. At least that’s not what He says in any of my Bibles.
ü Family should take care of each other and do the best they can.
And any of us would be okay with being in the situation this family is in? We’d be okay with not being able to help finance our mother’s medicine, although we desperately wish we could, and therefore having to watch her be made even more ill by an attempt to give her some kind of medicine to help? Really? And, as my daughter said, even if this woman had 15 children instead of three, would all 15 be able to provide $100 each month? That can be a good sum of money each month for some people. Especially if they have lost their job. (Another friend of mine just last week missed losing her job, DESPERATELY needed by her family. The national bank for which she had worked for years decided to close the mortgage facility here in Wilmington. Two weeks ago one of the guys in our small group needed someone and she left the bank, totally unaware of what was coming.)
ü Providing healthcare for everyone is too expensive.
And this lady, who ends up having to go to the Duke ER, can pay for the full cost of that visit? It won’t cost those of us who are so very special and have medical coverage? You believe that?
ü The government can't do a good job of healthcare. We have the best healthcare in the world. And that is because we have competition and private industry.
So medicine with a cost of $1,500 a month per person is “best”? And there is no way that can be improved? I question even why ANY medicine, particularly one probably needed by a good number of people, must have that kind of cost. It seems an obscene figure.
While I’m venting let me address the related issues.
§ It is "un-American" to believe in such things as heatlhcare for everyone. There is that implication that you don't love your country, which I find despicable.
I spoke up and corrected our daughter’s behavior when she was small out of love for her. I can speak out against what I see as a wrong in my country and do it because I DO love my country. The things that truly do make us great, such as child labor laws and equal civil rights laws, etc., came about by people seeing the possibility we could do better.
§ Many Christian leaders say healthcare reform "won't do anything". Or they call it Socialism.
These leaders need to tell me several things. Give me specific, monetary assumptions and projections on which you base your statements. And give me your professional credentials with respect to economic projections, etc. Encourage me to study the issue for myself as opposed to taking your word for it. Give me specific Biblical references on which you base your opposition to healthcare for people like my friend’s mother.
I could go on, but my wrist is starting to bother me. Although, if I am in discomfort all night, that will be okay with me. I am able to pay for the expenses I incurred today. I wish I had the choice to do so but also to have the allowable insurance payments applied to my friend’s mother’s account instead. I would do that in far, far less than a heartbeat. How can it be right that I received care today and this elderly lady must spend time at life’s end being sick and without the care she truly requires? Just tell me, how can that be right?
Note: I won’t take comments on this one. But any of you who know my email and want to comment, feel free!
