Like many Americans, I feel the election of President Barack Obama represents the realization of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream, where a person is judged not be the color of his skin but by the content of his character.
It is a dream come true that this brilliant man, with ties to Africa, Indonesia, Hawaii, Kansas and Illinois, is now our president and respected world leader. Regardless of one’s political leanings, it is undeniably a remarkable achievement.
Dr. King also said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in the health care system is the most shocking and inhumane.”
I have been a family doctor in Boulder County, Colorado for more than 46 years. In fact, when I interned at the University of Texas Hospital in Galveston, that institution was still segregated.
If you were white and needed surgery, you went to the white surgical ward; if you were black, you went to the black surgical ward. The only integrated department was pediatrics, presumably because kids hadn’t yet developed their prejudices.
But our health care (non)system continues to discriminate against those without insurance or resources to pay for health care.
As a physician I cannot offer the same services to an uninsured patient as I can to one who has health insurance.
Few people can pay cash for costly imaging studies such as CT and MRI scans, colonoscopies, lab tests, and expensive prescription drugs. Even those who have health insurance often find that their policies do not cover what they expected.
Many imaging studies, surgical procedures, and prescription drugs are denied or require preauthorization by the powerful insurers.
An insured patient of mine in her 30’s with breast cancer left the hospital owing that institution nearly $40,000 after the insurance company paid what they deemed to be the amount they owed for her care! All Americans have either experienced or know people who have dealt with similar situations.
Many do not realize that 20-30% of the dollars we send to our health insurers goes not to health care, but rather to the business of operating a profitable company—marketing, advertising, CEO salaries, stockholders, and, of course, profits. Ours is the only industrialized country that continues to discriminate against the uninsured and underinsured.
T. R. Reid’s documentary, “Sick Around the World,” revealed that other nations with universal health care do not have citizens going bankrupt, nor do their private insurers make a profit.
Access to care is a given and their outcomes are better. Preventative measures are part of most country’s health systems but, sadly, not ours.
Yet we pay far more per capita and spend a higher percentage of our GNP for health care than any nation. Most doctors, patients, and even hospitals are frustrated and annoyed. Many medical practices and even some hospitals have been forced to close.
Barack Obama promised health reform for our country. His dream of universal coverage must not include mandates to force citizens to buy from insurance and pharmaceutical companies whose primary goals are to make big profits.
Only a publicly financed, privately run system can help us realize the Dr. King dream of removing inequalities and injustices. A great start would be to pass Michigan Representative John Conyer’s HR 676 bill now in congress.
Howie C. Wolf, M.D., lives in Boulder. He can be reached at lobo985@comcast.net. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
