While we debate, millions still excluded
My perspective on the current health care system comes from four vantage points.
As a consumer, my recent experience dealing with the nation's health care system as a patient with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has been incredibly positive.
As a former employee of the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, my coverage through Blue Cross was exemplary. My care was exceptional and there were no challenges with payment for services.
There were others, however, who were sitting next to me at City of Hope who were struggling with inadequate or no coverage.
My second vantage point is that of a provider of care. For many years, I worked as a women's health care nurse practitioner. I have occasionally worked in that capacity at the local Planned Parenthood clinic.
I saw many men and women who came into the clinic for contraception and sexually transmitted disease treatment. Most of these patients use the clinic as their only source of health care services.
While the clinic is prepared to address their reproductive health needs, it does not offer comprehensive primary care. I saw first-hand many medical situations that were not being addressed. While we provided referrals to other health care providers, unless the client has the capacity to pay or has access to Medi-Cal or private insurance, they are left untreated. Many of these cases end up in emergency rooms.
My third vantage point is as a daughter-in-law. My husband is an only child. We are responsible for coordinating my mother-in-law's health care. She is on a fixed income, as an 87-year-old widow.
Each year, she hits the doughnut hole for Medicare drug coverage. Until she pays about $4,000 out of pocket, she is ineligible for the payment of her very expensive drug regimen. It would be very challenging for her to cover these medications without our assistance. There are certainly seniors in her position who go without their drugs because of this gap in the coverage.
Finally, as a former administrator of a program with 350-plus employees, I watched the cost of insurance coverage increase to a staggering level. Health insurance prices have more than doubled since 1999. This is a huge challenge for those managing budgets. While our income doesn't increase, our expenses rise dramatically.
This means that to balance the revenue and expenditures, the services have to be diminished. In the case of early childhood programs --the programs I supervised -- we took the difference out of supplies, travel, education and training for employees, as well as repair and maintenance. This made preserving the high quality of programs very difficult.
From these four perspectives, I am urging members of Congress to support a health care reform package that includes:
* Covering all citizens.
* No denial of services for pre-existing conditions.
* Insuring that a person is not dropped once health care services have begun.
* And a public option.
I am encouraging others to write their representatives in Congress to ensure these elements are included in a health care reform package that I hope will be signed into law by the end of the year.
While the debate drags on, people are dying.
Wendy Wayne of Bakersfield is the former director of First 5 Kern and has decades of experience in children's issues as an educator, administrator and nurse practitioner.
