WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ... 
WHAT WHAZIT?*

by sonya hammond

Oh, right ... health care, that issue that comes up whenever presidential hopefuls are doing everything but standing on their pointy heads to get our attention.

Depending on whom you believed, we have a health system that is either 'the best in the world', 'completely out of control,' or, a few may have admitted, one that, whatever its benefits, is unavailable to large portions of the population.

In the meantime, those most affected ... this does not include the heavily insured legislators whose decisions can make or break any promise ... are left to believe that finally something would be done.

Historically, it was and it wasn't.

The Clinton plan, presented by his wife who was accused of suffering from intelligence [a disease against which first ladies should heavily medicate if they want to be admired rather than taken seriously], went the way of all liberal ideas that were not part of Newt's Contract with America we didn't know we had signed, and which guaranteed that the Republicans could do everything in their power to save us from anything we might actually need.

Funding, available for more important stuff like stealth bombers that couldn't sneak their way out of their hangars in a blackout if the humidity were over 2%, was not fiscally possible for medical benefits no one felt we needed anyhow.

When the dirty laundry of health care reform again turned up in the Congressional hamper, it was pre-shrunk and sanitized. Most 'solutions' never escaped the clutches of the committees formed to discuss them, but those that did focused primarily on reforming health insurance ... commendable for those who can afford to be insured.

Since these 'reforms' depend more heavily on how insurance companies feel about them than how much they will relieve the insured, about the only thing they guarantee is higher premiums. They bypass the unemployed or uninsured who are apparently expected either to stay well, depend on the emergency room services of hospitals already sobbing over imminent financial disaster, or simply die and adhere to Scrooge's dictum to relieve us of the surplus population.

Meanwhile, as a blushing government averts its eyes, HMO's have proliferated like oversexed minks. With their initial foreplay out of the way, they are raising premiums, deleting as many 'unnecessary procedures' as they can get away with, and making sure that no one stays in a hospital longer than it takes to get them up off the operating table and into their support hose.

In a move intended to protect us from such rules as denying emergency room treatment to anyone with insufficient medical knowledge to recognize what constitutes an emergency, the president presented Congress a 'patients' bill of rights', a modest idea already deemed too expensive ... it doesn't take an MD to figure out for whom. But even if the suffering public is subject to fewer insurance mandates, such 'rights' will not be equal for all. If you can't afford insurance, you're out of the loop.

Then there is the constant stream of wailing over the probable demise of Medicare if 'something', vaguely defined, isn't done, which, to date, it isn't ... partly due to the understandable fears of those insured under it, and partly to the terror of politicians whose elections depend heavily on them.

To anyone who can face the problem with a rational mind [this lets out most politicians by default], it is obvious that Medicare does need to be scrutinized unemotionally and with a sharp eye to its administration's failure to actually look at what it is being charged, by whom, and for what.

And while the President's proposal that those uninsured, ages 55-64, should be allowed to pay for Medicare coverage is an arguably plausible idea, the cost for this indulgence would be out of the question for those most in need of it.

At the same time, those who seem determined to abolish Medicare should try addressing their own health problems under it. As Medicare attempts to stay viable by raising premiums and cutting benefits, most recipients are forced to pay [if they can] for additional supplementary insurance, and even then find themselves uninsured for problems that can impoverish them.

One case in point is Alzheimer's, a disease for which Medicare reimburses a doctor's office visit 50%, while paying in full for treatment of the common cold.

The sad fact, however, is that there is no treatment for those stricken with a disease that will destroy their minds, speech, rationality, ability to control bodily functions, and recognition of themselves or anyone else, and will require constant attention from those left to care for them until they inevitably die. Usually this caretaker is an aging spouse, or a child with other family demands, for whom there is no Medicare provision for the alternative of nursing or expensive 'managed' care.

One can sympathize with Nancy Reagan's sadness as she watches her once vital husband deteriorate. At the same time, that sympathy must be qualified by the knowledge that her husband is attended by a full-time nurse, and that Mrs. Reagan's life will not be torn apart by emotional and financial trauma or the humiliating legalities necessary to qualify her husband for the last-ditch solution of Medicaid. Thousands of less fortunate spouses endure untold hardship, loss of freedom, and the devastating depression of attempting to cope with the un-copeable.

More is needed for America's healthcare than band-aid reforms, minimal rights, and the need for patients in the throes of illness to educate themselves on how to second-guess a system buried in red tape.

To do less is to deprive us of basic rights guaranteed by our Constitution ... life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ... none of which can be achieved without health.

*Written in 1998, by 2004 this situation has, if anything, merely deteriorated.  Another presidential election campaign is warming up.  The issue of healthcare is again near the top of everyone's list of priorities.  Universal healthcare is again not an option.

© sonya hammond, 1998

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