Jay Neugeboren is an author whose latest book is 1940. He has a beautiful article in Today's NY Times called In Matters of the Heart, Luck can Make all the Difference, in which he makes the case for compassionate health care for all by telling the story of his brush with mortality in 1999:
Two doctors who examined me, including a cardiologist, saw no urgency in my condition. It remained for a lifelong friend, another cardiologist, to get the diagnosis right, and this by phone from 3,000 miles away.
When I told him I was concerned about occasional shortness of breath while swimming, and about an intermittent burning sensation in my back, he told me to get to a hospital as soon as possible. Why? Because he knew me, because he listened to me carefully and because he could place my new symptoms in the context of my overall story.
Jay soon discovered that he had three blocked coronary arteries -- two were 100% blocked and a third 90% blocked. He immediately had a quintuple coronary bypass operation, and is now a vigorous 71, playing regular singles tennis and swimming most days.
He recognizes that he was lucky on several counts:
The fact that I was privileged — not only to have these doctors as friends, but also to have health insurance that allowed me to receive treatment anywhere and by any doctor — is what saved my life.
I had, that is, what many Americans do not have: access to the best and most timely medical care available.
He notes the callous indifference of Republicans to people without insurance:
President George W. Bush famously said that all Americans, even the tens of millions without health insurance, can get health care by going to emergency rooms. Perhaps. But clearly the doctors one meets there have neither the time nor the knowledge — of specific illnesses or of individual patients — to provide anything resembling the best care.
I would go even further -- reliance on emergency room care means no preventative medicine, and the bills ultimately can bankrupt you. In fact, "They can always go to the emergency room" is the perfect slogan for the Republican party, summing up its despicable, indeed, sociopathic indifference to the well-being, fears and hopes of average people. You see it constantly -- vetoes of S-Chip, slashes of food stamps from the stimulus bill or railing against tax credits for poor people who pay "no taxes" (as if FICA, sales etc. are not "taxes").
I propose this as the permanent Republican slogan:
The GOP: You can always go to the emergency room.
Jay concludes his moving piece by noting that his extra time on earth enabled him to fall in love and get married again. He celebrates Valentine's Day twice -- on February 12 "in gratitude for the heart given back to me a decade ago" and on February 14 "when my wish for others will be that they might be as lucky, in matters of the heart, as I’ve been."
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BTW: 1940, is a fascinating and moving novel based on the true story of Dr. Eduard Bloch, who emigrated to New York in the 1930's and had the dubious distinction of having been doctor to the Hitler family when the future dictator was a boy.
Full disclosure: Jay was my Freshman English professor at Columbia back in a distant time when LBJ roamed the West Wing.