I had open-heart surgery at Primary Children’s Hospital 45 years ago today. I was a charity case.
My mom and dad, both blind, had their own business — he was a piano tuner and she kept the books and made his appointments — but they had neither insurance nor liquid assets at the time. They were hardworking, honest people who needed a hand when the youngest of their four children faced a medical crisis. They spent the rest of their lives helping others in need as they encountered them.
The kindness of the children’s hospital and the financial supporters who donated to care for strangers jump-started me into healthy late-teen years and adulthood, after I’d been undersized and physically exhausted for much of my childhood.
And I am well aware that I am alive solely because other people cleared a path to the surgeon for me, allowing me to get the care I needed.
The donors and doctors and nurses rebuilt my physical heart — and strengthened my spiritual heart to want to do my part to see that people with medical needs — young, old or in-between — can receive care.
I know lots of people who work as hard as me and don’t have access to great insurance. As an adult, I have always had a stable job with a company that offers excellent access, though for a brief and terrifying time when my husband was listed for a transplant it was not clear we’d be able to afford one particular medication that was not on our plan’s formulary. Because he'd have to have it to prevent organ rejection, it could have bumped him from the transplant list.
That gave me an adult perspective of what it’s like to crunch numbers and worry and wonder what to do when it comes to a serious, potentially deadly medical issue involving someone I dearly love. I sympathize heartily with people who try to figure out whether they should go to the doctor or tough things out to save money so they can feed the kids.
There’s no feeling of helplessness quite as distressing as wrestling with how to get medical help that’s within sight but not reachable.
There’s no feeling of helplessness quite as distressing as wrestling with how to get medical help that’s within sight but not reachable.
This nation has wrestled with questions of health care access for many years, starting well before the Affordable Care Act passed. Politicians on all sides have for years tugged and barked about the issue like puppies with a knotted-up sock. And the rest of us have all joined in. We’ve argued over the entry point to care, which most often comes from having health insurance through an employer. We’ve talked about the high costs of care and doctor shortages and waiting lists. We’ve worried as a group not only about how to get care, but how to limit care so it’s not wasted by unnecessary visits to hospital emergency departments, since wasting resources shrinks access.
And we’ve seen that delaying care or foregoing it can save pennies up front, but may be financially and emotionally devastating in the longer run.
Healthy People 2020 says people who don’t have insurance or access to care typically have a worse health status and are less likely to receive care at all. They receive diagnoses later, often when the toll of the delay includes both misery and a considerably more expensive course of treatment. They are more apt to die prematurely than friends and neighbors who can take care of health issues as they go.
Figuring this out isn’t a matter of supporting or opposing socialized medicine. There are far more options than that. But it does require a national will to prioritize health and humanity above political worries about which party drives the ambulance. Ballot measures have shown Americans generally agree that we need to see that people in different economic situations have entry points to care that they can afford.
I’m grateful for the door that opened for me.