Food or Health Care?

While our health care system could be more efficient, less expensive, and more cost-effective, health care will always be costly. The political proposal which requires everyone to pay for insurance, or work for an employer who will provide insurance, suggests that the proponent is living on a different planet. Not all people and not all businesses can afford to buy insurance.

One of my most significant experiences in medical school was to be sent to a spotlessly clean home in Brooklyn, New York where I spoke with two employed uninsured parents (each worked for small marginal businesses) who lived with their children. Because they were employed and had some earnings, they could not qualify for "welfare" and subsidized health care. As a result, they had to choose whether to eat or pay for medical services and medicine for their epileptic child. The parents were willing to forego food.

A number of years later, I sat in the basement of a restaurant in Chicago with co-members of the board of the National Health Lawyers Association. These were among the most sophisticated attorneys in the United States and individually dealt almost exclusively with health care issues. We talked about their personal fears about health care for their families. Without exception, each was worried about the cost and availability of health care for his or her young adult children. Each was worried that if his or her adult uninsured child became seriously ill, the parent would become the payer and the family savings would be exhausted.

The need for health care and health care security cuts across professional lines, gender, education, ethnicity, religion, economic status and any other category. Our country can implement a high quality health care system for all if the will is there.