“The Country Would Have Been Better Off If They Had Just Let Me Die Long Ago.”
The telephone call was tragic and ironic. George, the caller in Bangor Maine, is a 54-year-old man, chronically ill and disabled. He spoke on this morning’s Washington Journal, C-SPAN’s public affairs call-in show.
By his description of himself, he suffers from severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD. Unable to work, he lives “on my couch” burdened by disease between episodes of gasping for breath when he calls an ambulance and gets taken to the ER for ventilation, medication and stabilization, and then sent home to wait for the next time.
He blamed himself for his desperate trouble—30 years of smoking, he said. And he called to warn all America about the danger of the health care bill that passed a crucial vote in the Senate last night. If health reform passes, he implied, the country would encumber itself with taking care of people like him:
This country is bankrupt. The people to get what they want right now are selling their own children into soup lines ten or fifteen years down the road. I’m disabled, I’m on disability, I’m getting Social Security…. I’ve cost hospitals around this country over $100,000 because nobody would give me insurance because I have a lung condition.
The nation would bear the cost of people like him, if health reform passed, he said.
The country would have been better off if they had just let me die long ago. Of course I’m too coward to just lay here and let myself die.
And so each time he couldn’t take it any longer, he called for help and got raced to the hospital for emergency treatment.
Bill Scanlan, the C-SPAN host, asked him one question before the call terminated:
Bill: So, George, you have no health insurance at all?
George: No, They tell me I’ll be able to get Medicare next year.
The man doesn’t see that his words actually plead like no other words could for passage of the health care bill that moved forward last night.
He WOULD have had insurance, if that bill had been law during the years when he was rushed to hospitals and cost them thousands to treat his condition on an emergency basis. He COULD have seen a doctor regularly. His condition could have been stabilized at home. Possibly, advised by a personal physician, he would have gotten effective treatment to quit smoking.
But he is so full of anger and blame toward himself, he doesn’t understand that If health care reform had passed long ago, in all likelihood, he would not now suffer as he does. He is a glaring example of the need for the change that the Congress is now enacting.
And the most ironic part: He would have cost those hospitals less, not more, if the system of health care he is warning against had had him in its care.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Current Events, Medicine and Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.