Our Broken Health Care System

Do you remember, Mychelle ? I do. She was the little girl, who was taken to the emergency room, diagnosed, and the correct treatment ordered. She died. What happened? She had insurance, she arrived at the emergency room in a timely fashion, the physician was competent. The shocking reason Mychelle died was that her insurance carrier, or more pointedly, the insurance clerk, would not approve the treatment, as the emergency room was not covered in her insurance plan.

In Michael Moore’s film, “Sicko”, Mychelle’s story is recounted by her mother, whose voice is faltering, and an empty swing is seen in the background. Even the most hardened hearts were softened to hear this grieving mother tell what happened to Mychelle.

The year this occurred was not generations ago, but 1993. The same year that Bill Clinton (then President of the U.S.) went to Congress to persuade them a new health care system was needed. That too, as we all remember, failed.

Many reasons are cited for the failure; a conservative Congress, rich lobby groups from the Pharmaceutical and Insurance companies, and a poorly articulated plan. However, the failure was probably due to America’s fear that even a broken system of incomplete and indiscernible insurance is better than a complete new healthy system.
Even the uninsured, the soon to be uninsured, and the soon to be bankrupt due to health care costs are fearful.

“This is the legacy of an insurance structure that lulls many into believing they are secure when they are not, that hides vast costs in quiet deductions from workers' pay, that leaves government paying the tab for the most vulnerable and the least well, and that so fragments the purchase of care that no one can bargain for lower prices or judge the value of what is being bought.” (NEJM, 2007)