I can’t believe that for 30 years now we have been struggling with healthcare, its costs, and for the people who are still left out of the loop. In the 1980s, the insurance companies, and shortly thereafter, the pharmaceutical companies, along with their lobbyists high jacked the healthcare system in this country. Doctors and nurses were given far less authority to practice good medicine. Prices of healthcare started to rise and corporations ruled the no longer free markets. Cuts in staffing were made which meant bye-bye to TLC. (Remember that in hygiene class, “Tender Loving Care”?) Good ol’ Flo (Nightingale) is rolling over in her grave! Cuts meant ensuring higher profits for those of the fascist bent. Doctors started charging more and requesting more unnecessary procedures to make up their losses to the insurance and pharmaceutical crooks. In their need to earn a living to pay their medical school loans and build a practice for themselves, they too became crooked like the system that oversaw them. How many doctors do you know can even afford to run a private practice? The system has made it impossible. In 30 years or so, healthcare costs have doubled as a percent of our Gross National Product. There is no other nation on earth that comes close to that claim to shame. Insurance lobbyists, insurance companies, pharmaceutical lobbyists, pharmaceutical companies, and politicians who are in their pockets need to get out of the healthcare business. The ringleaders who are so dumb it’s ludicrous that anyone listens to them need to just go away. How about a “Death Panel” job? What a fear-mongering, deceptive, unethical and self-righteous pseudo-intellectual bunch of cronies. The media should just tune them out…but I digress. Here are a few stories about what I have seen in the healthcare controversy. I’m no expert but I know what I’ve experienced and am certain many of you have some true stories too. My sister was diagnosed at 59 with Leukemia. Of course, we tried everything and did everything her oncologist told us to do. She went down hill fast, the meds and the treatments were destroying her quality of life. Alas, we continued, in denial that something was going to make her better. By the time my sweet sister passed her 60th birthday she was gone. It was one hospital stay after another, for one infection after another and the life savings she had disappeared along with her. She cleaned nursing homes for slightly over 30 years, earning minimum wage but was able to save enough to send her nephew to college. She never got to see that. Her job dropped her; she was forced on to Cobra at an outrageous premium and battled the insurance companies to pay her bills until the day she asked to be put on Hospice. She was on Hospice less than 24 hours when she died. All the toxic med prescribed killed her. To this day I regret having agreed to procedures that were doing nothing but making fat cats richer and destroying a beautiful life with a horrific end. It was clear by then that nothing was going to save her or make her life any better. That was in March of 2007. In June of 2007 my dad passed on. God bless him at 83 he had to bury his daughter and live without his wife for 18 years. Mom died, like we all should be so blessed, in her sleep. She had a fatal heart attack in the days when “women do not have heart attacks”. The poor dear was in the emergency room the afternoon that she died complaining of back pain but nothing was done for her. How ironic, huh? They could have made a bundle on her, keeping her alive when God was calling for her to “Go Home”. Anyway, back to dad. He lived a good life but part of him died when his wife did. Seven years ago he was diagnosed with very early stage colon cancer. He went through surgery and we thought he was in remission for 5 years. That was not so. His cancer by then had spread to his lungs, bones and brain. With that diagnosis, he asked if he’d get better with any treatments available. The doctors tried to sell him on all kinds of chemo-treatments, newly released medications and everything else under the sun. The final decision was made when he asked if he’d ever get better. The answer was “no”. It would progress until one of his many, many health issues took him out. He opted for palliative care and lived 2 more years in agony and with no quality of life. He would ask me many times, “Sam, why am I taking these 20 different pills 3 and 4 times a day? I had to lie through my teeth and tell him it was for his comfort. I still regret that. Meds for stabilizing blood pressure, diabetes (which he never had), and a host of other things that had nothing to do with comfort were given only to keep him alive and run up the tab. My dad was a saint. He was a Quartermaster 1C during WWII. He joined the Navy on Pearl Harbor Day at 16 and my grandmother had to sign him in. He worked hard, made a great life for his wife and family, retired from 2 different careers. This very active man ended up pooping in his Depends because he couldn’t even get out of bed for 2 years. It’s not like I wanted my dad dead. I just wanted him comfortable and to let God choose his rightful time. A more personal story happened to me this year. In January I thought I had a bad allergy episode that ended up in my chest. I saw 3 different doctors because my primary was always too busy to fit me in. It’s the old QUANTITY vs QUALITY! My fever was 104 which is serious at 51 years of age. I was dehydrated, had chest pain, and difficulty breathing. None of the 3 physicians ever requested a chest x-ray or blood workup but did run up tremendous doctor visit charges. Finally one day it was too much. I went to the emergency room and was told I had been misdiagnosed and actually had severe pneumonia. I was admitted sometime in February and placed on antibiotics to clear the pneumonia. The conditions at the hospital were unbearable, unsanitary and unprofessional. I voiced these concerns to the “patient advocate” and was discharged shortly thereafter. I still had pneumonia but “…was getting better”, my white cells were still very high but would clear up after I was sent home with oral antibiotics. Not long after that I was back in the emergency room with the same symptoms as before. Why I went back to the same hospital, I don’t know but I thought, “They screwed up and needed to fix things”. A surgical consult with a doctor from another hospital revealed that I had an empyema that needed to be removed. The surgeon would not allow me to be anywhere in that hospital except the ICU. He feared staph, MRSA, CDIFF or some other superbug that was known to be common in this hospital. I had my empyema removed March 1st and was released on oxygen and very powerful intravenous antibiotics to be administered at home. I would have been able to save this second visit to the hospital if someone besides the insurance company was calling the shots. Three more times I ended up in the hospital (a different one this time) for dehydration, blood clots, and finally renal failure. Was this just to run up over $300,000 in medical and pharmaceutical bills? It turned out to be just one bad insurance company decision after another. The doctors basically had their hands tied. I have been in the hospital 5 times between February and May but should have been cared for and recovered after the very first stay. It’s August and I continue to negotiate the problems with insurance payments, medical billing offices and the New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission’s Insurance Division. When will it ever end? When can we start having affordable health and prescription coverage for all that’s based on RESULTS RATHER THAN CORPORATE PROFITS? Find out which of your elected officials are in bed with the lobbyists of those who are “The Death Panel”. Thanks for coining the term, Ms. Sarah “Quitty” Palin!