The Great Health Care Debate: An American Tragedy

The Great American Health Care Debate is an anxiety-producing reality for all Americans affected by its outcome - no matter which side you're on. We are bombarded equally by proponents of changing our Health Care system and the entrenched keepers of the status quo daily, with seemingly no end in sight. The two camps' adherents are typically divided by their socioeconomic class and traditional political alignments: the poorly served less financially fortunate and those with left-leaning political viewpoints want change; those with the economic resources to insulate themselves from the system’s inadequacies and/or right wing sensibilities advocate slower or no change.

I happen to be a strong advocate for change. I am usually a person who votes a split ticket. I don't belong to a political party and lean toward fiscal Conservatism and social Liberalism. The staggering proposed costs of staying put or reforming the system is more than I can wrap my mind around. My previous history and inclinations would never have indicated I'd advocate such massive spending of our tax dollars for anything close to these numbers.

What prompted me to vigorously advocate for the massive overhaul of our Health Care system currently in place are the sickening firsthand experiences my loved ones and I have undergone while engaged with it. As I share these experiences with you, I won't cite statistics. I won't spew red-faced political rhetoric, or try to paint myself as uniquely qualified to point out the failings of our current Health Care model. I will describe in detail how they have affected us in real life - and unnecessary death.

I have lost my mother and my wife to cancer in the last eight years. I currently have a friend of thirty years very likely dying of it while receiving inpatient "care" at a very famous cancer treatment facility. The uniformity of neglect, indifference to suffering and buck-passing of liability exhibited by the layers of administrators and doctors in each case is truly remarkable.

For brevity's sake, I'll stick with current events - the case of my friend now undergoing in-patient Stage IV cancer treatment. He has been admitted twice by two of the most well-respected hospitals for said purpose in our land.

Four months ago my friend was a strong and lanky 6' 3", 180 pounder capable of working 12-hour days in his consulting business with no sweat. He then found a lump in the side of his neck and began experiencing significant back and digestive pain. By the time inpatient testing was finally ordered two months later after a trip to the emergency room, he weighed 150 pounds for his first hospitalization.

By this time he was in tremendous pain, with tumors of still undetermined origin spread throughout his body. Both hospitals he has been admitted by called in large teams of specialists to consult with him and each decided to conduct the most sophisticated and expensive testing - blood work, CT scans, full-body MRI's, and x-rays.

For the MRI, the patient cannot eat for at least 12 hours prior to the test. My friend was starved for nearly 30 hours by the first hospital while waiting for the test to be completed. It took over a week of wading through the hospital's buck-passing stall tactics and miscommunications between the resident medical, oncology and radiology departments for them to even suggest a course of treatment.

He was deemed too weak by that time to endure radiation or surgery. When confronted about the possibility they had taken too long to act on his behalf - starving him while plying massive doses of Dilaudid and Fentonyl to dull his pain, weakening him even further - we were told that accident victims are moved ahead of illness sufferers for MRI testing until there are no more. They had the audacity to claim that his case was processed more quickly than usual when compared to others in his situation, as if we should be thankful we were so lucky! God only knows how much suffering those less fortunate endure...

They prescribed an intense outpatient chemotherapy regimen to begin the following week. He was then discharged.

By the time he was sent home, he weighed 143 pounds. As the tumors grew and the combined effects of extreme pain, over-medication to palliate it and ineffective chemotherapy took away what was left of his appetite and strength, my friend sought a second opinion. It took nearly a week for his attending oncologist to give him a referral. He was now down to 135 pounds and couldn't hold down food.

The chemo was stopped and the new hospital admitted him. They ordered the same tests as were already done yet again. He was again starved for nearly 2 days while waiting to have his MRI while no treatment other than more narcotics and a saline drip were administered. Given the dire need of nourishment for his ravaged body, he and his entire support network asked the treatment team repeatedly for a feeding plug to be inserted. After nearly another week of waiting and weakening, they advised against it due to the risk - and suddenly prescribed radiation previously deemed too risky to shrink his neck mass which was now the size of an infant's head.

He started radiation tonight. He was found today to have fluid buildup in his lungs. His prognosis is grim at best. He is barely 50 years old and one of the kindest, most generous men I have ever known. For him to be treated this way is nothing short of devastating for all of us who believe that these revered qualities in a person deserve the complete opposite.

Unfortunately, his story is par for the course. Talk to anyone who has lost a loved one and wasn't rich enough to afford paying for the best physicians' care - many of whom don't accept insurance anymore. My subjective account will be echoed over and over.

If I had time and space I could do so myself. What my family endured at the hands of insurance companies and the medical profession during the treatment of my mother and wife was as bad or worse.

We are conditioned in our culture to believe that we should not readily question the authority of our medical professionals; "the Doctor Knows Best", right? How can it be argued by anyone in full possession of his/her faculties and with a functioning conscience that a system of health care delivery consistently preying upon us at our most vulnerable while operating with such obscene disregard for our families and us doesn't need fixing? That's even before we point out the outrageous amount of money we have pay them to do it!

The problem needs to be addressed by giving a unified public voice to the millions of average Americans who have seen loved ones tortured and killed by a system feeding the greedy and corrupt. We have lived the truth. No amount of bogus statistics or political posturing for profit can obscure us if we stand up as one. We must demand our duly elected officials to devise a mandated public mechanism to root out corrupt insurance companies, hospital administrators, and medical practices. We must do the same to disable and punish parasitic lawyers enormously profiting from protecting the greedy and making false malpractice claims against honest medical practitioners.

We cannot allow these institutional criminals to police themselves any longer if our nation's soul is to survive. If this belief makes me a "Socialist" as some of the status quo whores calling themselves "patriots" claim, I wear it proudly. I still believe that our nation was built upon the most humane principles in recorded human history. Our current medical system - an American tragedy in motion - reflects their perversion. We must ask our leaders and ourselves if this reflection is who we have truly become as a nation.