This week, President Obama will meet with Congressional leaders to take up the topic of healthcare reform once again. As a physician who works on the front lines, my message for them is simple: giving up now is not an option.
I am fortunate to work with dedicated doctors and nurses, and in them I see the strength of our health care system. Yet, like so many of my colleagues, I also see what is wrong with our healthcare system.
I see the patient with asthma, merely in his twenties, who runs out of inhalers and suddenly can't breath. I see him connected to a breathing machines in our intensive care unit.
I see the small business worker who could never afford insurance, now requiring dialysis because high blood pressure damaged his kidneys beyond repair.
The single mother of two who showed up for her mammograms every year. Then she lost her job and with it her insurance. I see her, three years later, to confirm that indeed that lump on her breast is cancer.
I see this and so much more. And like other physicians, I know that healthcare reform cannot be pushed back any more.
For those of us who support reform, the last few weeks have been difficult. We are so close to passing a bill that, while imperfect, is still a significant step in the right direction. After the election in Massachusetts, however, the media thinks that we cannot pass health reform. Some in Congress are afraid. There is talk of giving up.
This talk reminds me of a conversation I had with another physician a few months back. He was taking call, working all day and then admitting new patients to the hospital that same night. He was on his feet, taking care of patients, responding to pages, talking to families, checking labs, writing notes. Finally at 2:30 in the morning, twenty hours into his shift, there was a lull, a chance for a quick nap. He made his way to the call room in the basement of our hospital. Just as his head touched the pillow, his pager went off again. There was another patient waiting to be admitted.
I asked him, "What keeps you going? You have a wife and kids at home. You could be spending time with them or getting a full night's sleep in your own bed." He looked at me and asked? "You think we have it tough? Our patients are the ones who are going through real struggles. They have to cope with illness and the thought of burdening their loved ones. Yet, they don't give up. So who am I to give up on them?"
It is tempting, when things get difficult, for us to give up. It is tempting, when the political winds change course, for members Congress to give up on those who need healthcare, to move on to something easier.
For us who work in healthcare, we know that giving up won't cure our patients' asthma. It won't make cancer go away. Giving up won't relieve the pain of a lady with a fracture or that of a family that just lost a loved one.
The mother undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer while also holding down a job is not giving up.
The wife who prays at the bedside of her husband injured in an accident is not giving up.
The alcoholic with cirrhosis, having resisted a drink for four years and now patiently waiting for a liver transplant, is not giving up.
The nurse who eases the pain of a patient with a stroke, the physical therapist who gets him to walk again, the doctor who works to prevent another one -- they are not giving up.
Our patients do not give up. Because of them, we cannot give up. Neither should our elected officials, until every American has access to the affordable and quality healthcare that is their right.
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