Everybody In! Nobody Out!

My friend, Dr. Charles Van Der Horst, and fellow doctors

and medical students during a mass rally in Raleigh, NC

in support of Medicare for All!

     I received two letters in the mail recently from my health insurance company.  One letter informed me that insurance will not pay for testing that was ordered by my primary care doctor and done by a Pulmonary specialist. The second letter was informing me that insurance would no longer pay for a medication that I have taken for years. My doctors and I are battling the insurance company for payment of the $2,000 testing. On Saturday, I talked to my pharmacist about the cost of paying for the medication myself. The cost will be in access of $150 a month. I also told the pharmacist that my doctor had suggested that if the cost is too high, he will assist me in ordering the medication from Canada.The pharmacist informed me that he is from Canada, thus a conversation regarding health care ensued. He said that he has many customers who order medications from Canada to avoid the high costs here in the US. He made it very clear that the majority of the bad things we hear about the Canadian healthcare are untrue. In Canada, pharmaceutical companies are told how much they will be paid for a drug and the pharmaceutical companies have no control over the cost. On the other hand, here in the US, the pharmaceutical companies set their own prices for the drug and we pay it or do without the medication. He ended the conversation by saying that he just wished every American had the kind of health care that Canadians have and he doesn’t understand why we would keep rejecting single payer health care that has been proven successful.

We have been attending the Health Care Justice group meetings and have heard some of the most knowledgeable physicians in the country speak about health care. Practically every developed nation in the world has some form of government-managed universal health care.None of these nations have gone to single payer, decided it didn’t work and switched back. According to the latest report of the O.E.C.D.(Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), an organization of mostly wealthy nations, the United States does not have a higher quality of healthcare than other countries. In reality, the US has a shorter life expectancy, a higher infant mortality rate and fewer doctors than most other developed countries.  Doctors in the US are frustrated because they spend more than 50% of their time with paperwork and battling insurance companies partly due to situations like mine. And sadly, Americans spend more money on their health care by a huge margin than any other country, yet we do not get better results. Stephanie Woolhandler, M.D. Harvard Medical School, has concluded that 62.1% of all bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies and over 75% of Americans who file medical bankruptcy have health insurance.

Many Americans choose to go to other countries for healthcare. I have a friend who moved to Costa Rica and one factor that drew him there was their excellent healthcare. Costa Rica provides universal healthcare to all of its citizens and permanent residents. The Costa Rican health care system is  highly rated internationally and the life expectancy is higher in Costa Rica than in the US. My friend, who is a US citizen, is able to buy into universal health care for $60 a month. That covers all medical needs including dental and medications. Costa Rica has seven internationally accredited private hospitals and ten world class public hospitals including a children’s hospital that is also rated as one of the best in the world. In every community there are small clinics called EBAIS for non-emergencies.  EBAIS is short for Equipos Basicos de Atencion Integral en Salad and in English means Basic Terms of Global Health Care. In Costa Rica, healthcare starts at the EBAIS, the local clinic that is accessible to all. On one trip to Costa Rica, I stepped on coral and developed an infection. I was able to see a doctor immediately at one of the EBAIS. I received excellent care for a minimum cost and to my delight, the doctor had attended Bowman Gray Medical School at Wake Forest University right here in NC. On another trip to Costa Rica, my daughter became ill with what we thought was a stomach virus and we had the exact same great experience at an EBAIS.

I just wish that as Americans, we could have the freedom of knowing that our health care needs will always be met with a high quality of care. I wish we knew we could count on good healthcare being there for us regardless of our employment status or other life circumstances. I wish we did not have to put jars in restaurants, sponsor bake sales or have GoFundMe pages to pay our medical bills. I wish our doctors could spend their time taking care of our health needs instead of doing paperwork. I wish we had the freedom of knowing that we will not have to battle insurance companies or order medications from another country. I wish we did not have to worry about being one illness away from bankruptcy. I agree with my pharmacist. I don’t understand why we would reject quality universal healthcare that is a proven success around the world.  We deserve better!

Useful websites:
www.healthoverprofit.org
www.pnhp.org

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/opinion/the-fake-freedom-of-american-health-care.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0