Horse Pills

Overheard among co-workers today:
#1: How's your grandmother doing?
#2: Still not dead!

My activities today have been health care focused. This is not an unusual phenomenon, as I deal in HC policy and the myriad twists and turns of Health Care Reform in MA, but it seemed more striking today than usual. My father got his toes welded together yesterday. While this sounds like a mythical accident metal lab teachers use to scare their students, it actually occurred at an expensive and prominent hospital.

His roommate at said hospital was unlike anyone I've ever seen before, yet have spoke of many a time in meetings regarding Health Care cost containment and the like. According to what my dad could piece together through his morphine soaked haze, this man- let's go ahead and call him Bob, for ease of story telling- was poisoned by his girlfriend via his meal (sounds like a stable relationship). Said girlfriend then pushed Bob down the stairs breaking his feet (which is why, presumably, he landed in Ortho recovery) then stole all of his furniture(...?...). My dad joined Bob, uninsured and literally without a chair to sit on, in room 610 on his 13th day in arguably the most expensive hospital in the nation. It was, however, the first time within those nearly 2 weeks that he agreed to take a shower- during which he flooded the shared room, as well as the one next to it (always a plus for people waddling around in attempt to recover from knee or foot surgery).

It is in my father's roommate that I find the paradox of health care and my greatest dilemma in negotiating my liberal soul with my pragmatic approach to policy. Clearly, this man needed and deserved care. Yet, 13 days of constant attention screams of abuse of the system. The fine line of medical care is both clear to the naked eye, as well as, so indiscernible that brilliant economists and their financial wizard colleagues can't put a fine point upon it. I struggle to resolve my 'stance' on health care goals as neither an expert in many of its nuances nor an impartial party to the nature of health care as a basic human right.

We are bleeding money to the health care industry, yet any cut means real pain for real, hard working people. We long to promote primary care as an alternative to expensive hospitalization, yet do not dedicate enough resources toward education for those for whom there has never been any option but the ER for medical care. We get angry about the Bob's but don't adequately address the nature of the problem that got him to his comfortable bed (far superior to his new lack-o-bed awaiting him at home) and allowed him to stay in it for too long on the taxpayer's dime. For these, and so SO many more constant and daunting issues within our medical system, I have no answers- and working among some of the smartest people I've met as only revealed the depth of the complexities inherent in any efforts to find 'solutions'.

BUT

In light of the recent holiday, I am thankful for the care that my dad and many other important people I love have received and wouldn't want it denied in any circumstance. That's the thing- once you have a name and a face, nothing seems like too much. And so I continue plugging, half angry at agencies that can not dig deep and find some waste to be cut just as I celebrate the incredible accomplishments of medicine and its reach to the masses in my old/new state. Sometimes it feels like life is one big, massive confusing contradiction.

At least I still have all of my furniture.