Health Care Reform: Is Change Really Worth Losing a Finger?

An Opinion Piece by Broadside Opinion Editor William Curtis

Imagine sitting in a health care reform town hall meeting. You’re there simply to become better informed with the policies and changes that President Barack Obama’s administration is trying to bring to health care.

You’ve heard the news reports about the outrage and occurrences that have brought a pessimistic shadow over such meetings.

You assume that your town is too friendly to become one of those unfortunate towns that are broadcasted over ABC news because of the seemingly pointless and random racial outbursts and attacks on other people because of their dissenting opinions.

But boy were you wrong. An outburst ensues; it starts with unintelligent banter between two people, then it escalates into two men screaming at one another.

You begin to think how something so simple as health care could cause so many people to become so enraged. And just as you finish that thought, a scream fills the entire room.

You dart your eyes over to the source of the panic and see a man with his hand in the air with blood spurting from the place where an index finger once was.

This scenario was a literal news report that I saw on television yesterday. The sheer fact that this even happened upsets me to the core.

Being a health care professional for the past few years and working in surgery, I have seen many patients forced out of the hospital without receiving treatment due to having no insurance or because their insurance company won’t cover the procedure.

I always understood when insurance companies would refuse to cover something like a cosmetic surgery.

But when you have to tell a man with metastatic cancer, or a mother whose son suffers from a congenital disease that their insurance company has refused payment for their surgery, it hurts.
I know working in a hospital comes with the obligation of being emotionally distant from your patients—a problem I have never had.

But seeing the face of an innocent child that has been in such pain for so long manages to find its way into my mind and heart easier than when I have to tell a family that they have just lost a loved one, which is a task that is incredibly hard in itself.

People shouldn’t have to live this way—they shouldn’t have to fight with a company they pay to help them when it comes to their medical coverage.

A preexisting condition shouldn’t be a factor in whether or not a person gets coverage. It should just happen. You have a health issue; medical professionals are trained to help you, and the fact that we can so easily be prevented from doing what we are trained and eagerly willing to do hurts us emotionally just as much as it hurts the patient.

Socialistic medicine. Such a stigma of ignorance can only be found in such topics with the word ‘socialistic’ attached, which is also a sad thing.

People immediately associate anything socialistic with red flags, communism and wars long lost to the sea of time, and they begin to feel threatened. The thought of subsequent change brings fear and uncertain questions to the everyday person. But when has change ever been so easily accepted?

My favorite president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, received extreme opposition when he proposed the New Deal to the U.S. after the Great Depression. I never really heard of people’s fingers being bitten off back then, but I am sure something along those lines probably happened at some point.

But the change that Roosevelt wanted did eventually come, and look how beneficial it was to the country!

Some of the programs that the Roosevelt Administration created are still alive and thriving to this day, like the Tennessee Valley Authority of 1933, or the Social Security Act of 1935.
I know that Communism and Socialism haven’t really been good indicators for social progression and cohesion, but if you take a look at medicine in European countries you really can see a change in how patients are cared for by physicians and trained professionals.
Of course people who have socialistic medicine have their complaints about their own system, but what’s the problem with simply trying something new?

These complaints aren’t very good arguments for why the U.S. shouldn’t try socialized medicine.
Change is inevitable; you simply need to look no further than the White House to see that.
The big question now is if health care reform will really bring a change to our medical system. I think anything other than the system we have now would be better for all Americans, citizens with insurance, and without.

But the only way we can actually see if this will be a beneficial change is if we actually try.
Loosing a finger over the debate of health care is just as absurd as sticking with the system we have now. I’m not saying that health care won’t still have its many problems, but maybe if or when this change comes, we can bring equality to a system that demands difference and change the future of this country through the health of every American citizen!