Doctor Day

Shower and shave before throwing down a fruit bar with the usual java gulps to get the day off to a proper start. I've got some old Genesis on the Beamer's audio system. When did progressive rock go bad? Your Own Special Way still sounds good through the trimmed forest in the ear canal. {Too little on top, but plenty where you never want to see it. Hair. Might just shower in Nair one day.}

Dad's got another doctor's appointment with the professional system he loves to hate, that offers no cure, but remains the only source of the lung candy he requires to gasp along in the sedentary stasis of his twilight years. Dad realizes he finds himself as one lucky guy having a chauffeur when the need mandates, and possessing insurance as well as Medicare to cover all the incidentals. My sister, former agricultural specialist for the US government, finds herself driving a truck cross country everyday without any health insurance as she approaches 55 years of age.

{"Got your chips cashed in.... Truckin'......"}

The doctor goes through dad's brief check up. He's lost a few pounds. Too much effort trying to breathe burns through the calories. Eat before bedtime is the suggestion. See you in three months. Bye. Another appointment made and disease management triumphs again with a suitcase of pills as your ticket for the long slow decline. Those pills cost a lot, but he is covered and one of the very lucky ones

My in-laws are in much worse shape. I won't bore you with the details, but I will say they too are both with terminal ailments, take lots of expensive drugs and get managed by the system to pay as high a tab as possible for these drugs while having been denied some more expensive up-front solutions a few years back that might have mitigated both the drug intake and the disease. The proposed solutions could also have failed, but having an HMO rather than a doctor make the final decision just seems wrong.

America finds itself as a really sick nation, and the reason we are so sick has to do with our health care system. Frontline just put together an exceptional program looking at this issue. The report is call Sick in America, and it follows another exceptional program done last year, Sick Around The World, in exploring the growing health care crisis and the now urgent need to fix the system here in America.

We cannot afford to pass the buck on universal health care any longer. For those who stop by this blog to check on the musings of this Thrasher, I recommend strongly that you check out the links provided in the posting and view these informative programs. Some of the stories will bring a tear to your eyes, or remind you of some of the people you know struggling to survive in a market that cares more about profit than people.

Lisa Girion from the Los Angeles Times, one of the several featured people in the Sick in America story, has an article in February of this year on California health insurers exceeding the state issued rates for last resort health coverage. This type of coverage is designed for people who cannot get coverage on the open market due to a previous condition or when they have lost their job. Vulnerable people in the worst circumstance are the ones the insurance companies prey on for maximizing premiums and when they get the chance to drop you do so out of hand.