Friday, December 14, 2012

Health. CARE. First. AID.

FILE UNDER: A Moment of Clarity.

Words.

"...There is no class in medical school that covers telling someone she has metastatic cancer and, in the same breath, telling her there's nothing you can do — because she doesn't have insurance. 

...President George W. Bush once noted that people have access to healthcare in America. "After all," he said, "you just go to an emergency room." But even Bush didn't see that as a sensible approach to healthcare. For patients like Sofia, emergency rooms are often the only option for healthcare, but they are a very poor substitute for basic medical care.

People need insurance because physicians (and patients) are poor fortune tellers. We can't tell who will get sick. And for diseases like metastatic cancer, emergency care is woefully inadequate. I have hope that President Obama's healthcare law will give patients like Sofia a chance.

On Friday, states must announce whether they will set up their own health insurance exchanges or rely on the federal government to do so. Some states, like California, have already made great progress. Others have dragged their heels. Additionally, some states have already announced that they will opt out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, something a Supreme Court decision earlier this year allowed them to do.

I'm not a fortune teller, but I can predict that tragedies like Sofia's are inevitable without universal insurance coverage. States that resist doing everything in their power to facilitate that goal should expect people like Sofia to keep turning up in their emergency rooms."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Sofia's choice

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