The Following is the text of a letter I will be sending to my Representative, Senators and to President Obama. And to the Reps and Senators of Florida who represent my wife's uncle. And I guess I'll send it to Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and anyone else who claims to be worried about "death panels".
On Sunday, April 2, 2011 my wife’s elderly aunt and uncle were driving home from church services in North Miami when their car was broadsided by another car that failed to stop for a red light. Their car was struck on the driver’s side and the impact seriously injured my wife’s uncle, Jacques, who was driving the car. His wife received only minor injuries. Uncle Jacques is 78 years old. He was taken to a local hospital and treated for broken ribs and compressed spinal vertebrae. As part of his treatment he was given an abdominal scan to check for internal injuries. While the doctors did not find any additional injuries resulting from the accident the scan did reveal a mass on his liver. This mass was diagnosed as cancerous and Uncle Jacques was advised of the treatment options that the doctors thought appropriate. As he is quite elderly and already in fragile health, after consulting with his wife and family, he elected to pursue a partial resection of the liver to remove the growth but to forgo chemo or radiation treatments. They concluded that this would allow him the most time with the best quality of life for whatever time he has left. He was referred to a Liver Transplant Center in the area and given an appointment for surgery. Upon arrival at the center on the date of his appointment, in great discomfort from his injuries and wearing a back brace to stabilize his spine, he was informed that he did not have sufficient Medicare coverage to cover the cost of the resection operation and a credit check of his finances revealed that he had insufficient credit to cover the difference.
He was turned away from the facility and sent home.
He was sent away because he could not pay, because he is not wealthy enough to treat.
The for-profit medical insurance system that we have in this country today decided he was not worth helping.
Many on the right like to scare people, especially elderly people, that healthcare reform and the ACA are going to lead to “death panels” of bureaucrats deciding, based on the bottom line costs, who will live and who will die. They scare people that their grandparents, or their aunts and uncles, will be deemed not worth saving by a cold system concerned only with numbers.
But I ask, when the for-profit HMO run system in existence today, already does that very thing to our elderly where is the outrage from the Right?
We don’t have to fear “death panels” in our future.
We already have them TODAY.
They’re called for-profit HMO’s.
How many more people could we afford to treat, to keep alive, if the billions that the insurance companies spend paying people to find reasons not to pay for treatments for ill people so they can pay a dividend to investors instead went to doctors and hospitals to actually treat the ill?
Our system is broken. Hopelessly many say.
What can we do?