Healthcare Reform

I will have to skip this weekend's poem to blog about healthcare reform. Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the monumental Senate-approved healthcare reform bill 219-212 which now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature. This is really a historic change that took a tremendous effort among politicians and still has a significant opposition. This bill will extend coverage to 32 million Americans and protect those who have coverage from losing it. It is a major step to guaranteeing that medical care is a fundamental right, not a privilege of those with money especially in this time of skyrocketing healthcare costs, an aging population, and a poor economy. Indeed, health care has almost become a moral issue; how can it be ethical for such a wealthy nation to turn away citizens (and non-citizens) at hospitals and clinics because they don't have insurance? Why should insurance companies hold such power and sway over doctors and patients? Why did we as physicians abandon that cliche of "helping people" to jump aboard the ship of the wealthy who care for the wealthy? How can we just watch as patients get sicker with diseases that can be prevented or ameliorated until they have to show up at the emergency department costing us far more with intervention than prevention? How can insurance companies spend so many resources into ferreting out ways of dropping expensive patients from their plans, keeping only the profit-generating customers? So much of this convoluted system makes no sense, and it is my firm hope that healthcare reform, Barack Obama, and the politicians who made this possible stand at that pivot-point upon which we can start taking care of people again.