Everyone Deserves Health Care

How did health care—the whole gargantuan system—get so big, so complicated and so expensive? It’s almost incomprehensible that this country, the most prosperous on Earth, does not have a health care plan to meet the needs of its medically indigent citizens.

Social Security was instituted more than 7 decades ago. Medicare for the elderly has been around for forty years. Where has forethought regarding health care for the masses been hiding all that time? Surely putting a plan in place would’ve been a more manageable undertaking all those years ago when the population was smaller and medicine was simpler.

Perhaps I’m letting my pessimistic side take over, but it seems to me that trying to get a leash on Monster Health Care now is akin to herding cats—gaining control of one aspect only to have it wriggle loose when attention is turned to another.

At the beginning of 2007, governors of three populous states—California, Illinois and Pennsylvania—announced plans for sweeping restructuring of health care in their states. As this New Year begins, none of the three states has enacted any part of the proposed changes.

Insurance companies and other health-related business lobbies have dug in their heels and are fighting steadfastly to prevent passage of measures that will cut into their profits. Throw partisan politics into the mix and the possibility of progress of any kind begins to seem like a fairy tale.

My first job as a new RN was working in a hospital-based outpatient department that operated as a big multi-specialty clinic for the medically indigent. The clinic served as a training ground for the hospital’s house staff and it was a busy place. The demand for health care was greater than its availability then, as it is now. We overbooked appointments and put in more hours than our shifts called for. There was no other way, because resources were stretched thin and adequate manpower just wasn’t there to allow us to do otherwise. I quickly developed empathy for those good folks whose backs were often against the wall when it came to finding, let alone affording, medical care. All these years later, the needs remain and the solutions are still elusive.

At this point, all I can be is hopeful. I’m hoping for a miracle.