Don’t leave us behind, the official song of health reform

It’s not just patients who have been excluded from this process.

I’ve come to understand that, in President Obama’s myopic view of the world (after all, he is married to a hospital executive), some doctors are “right people” . . . but a whole lot more are “wrong people”. If we oppose reform as it was being imposed before the Congressional break, we’re anti-patient, “angry”, spiteful, “selfish”, etc.

As I pointed out on a local GSO NC blog a few days ago, if I was diagnosed with breast cancer tomorrow, and got weak as a kitten and lost all my hair and had to stop working (ala some of the patients being paraded through once Congressional hearing or another), I’d likely eventually go bankrupt – because I cannot get disability insurance.

I am fully medically insured (through “non-profit” BCBS of NC), but at some point, if I could not work, I am certain I would not be able to make the premium payment.

I cannot get disability insurance because fifteen years ago (during my medical residency) I was treated for depression and an eating disorder – and that has locked me out of being covered for ANYTHING else every time I’ve applied.

As it has been explained to me, a long time ago, a lot of doctors in a previous generation when out on medical disability due to ill-defined psychiatric problems – essentially retiring (I’m sure they’re all fine upstanding members of the AMA). The insurance companies got wise to the game and hedged their bets – to the point of excluding anyone who had ever sought care (as they should seek care) for depression.

Bottom line: If she got sick, another primary-care doctor would bite the dust. How’s that for contributing to physician shortages and access problems?

We won’t even go into why this particular primary-care doctor has no fiscal reserve (something which REALLY DESERVES a Congressional hearing) – that might get my comment here deleted.

So my question of all the reformers still begs: Rather than quickly passing a whole bunch of “sweeping” government-administrated reform – which generally is (1) a whole lot more expensive than the politicians will ever own up to, (2) fixes a whole lot of nothing, (3) and causes more problems than it solves (i.e. all those “unintended consequences” that no one in the Obama administration or AMA wants to talk about), WHY isn’t our government looking at the real problems in our current system – which, as screwed up as it is, still provides the best care anywhere on earth?

Those problems are ALL about REAL oversight and REAL accountability and fair play (especially in the charity or “non-profit” sector) . . . not to mention a finely-honed sense of entitlement for entire segments of the population (translation: we’ve set no reasonable limits on what we’re already doling out).

Why isn’t President Obama or James Rohack picking up the phone and talking to people like me?