Ramblings About Healthcare

Luke got eye surgery today. He's pretty miserable. And I'm insanely jealous. My eyesight is so much worse than his, and he got to get his done for free at one of the top hospitals in the country. I have always wanted to work at Walter Reed, so I was coveting after it too. Not fair! (That's one of the phrases I'm trying to ban from my house).

We ended up sitting around the waiting room for 7 hours which was ridiculous, but that's the military, hey? The girls were amazingly well behaved though and, for the most part, were able to stay entertained with TV and electronics. We should have found a babysitter, but we didn't think it was going to take quite so long. I did have to bribe them once with candy from the gift shop, but for the most part, they did great with an incredibly boring day.

On the plus side, the wait did give us the opportunity to watch the coverage of the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare. It was sooo interesting. I am personally a fan of Obamacare. I think it is far, far from perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. One of the biggest things that struck me when I started as an ICU nurse was the number of people who should never have been there. We had so many patients who would have a concern, but put off going to the doctor because they couldn't afford it and didn't have health insurance. They would end up in the Emergency Room after the got to the point where they felt like they were going to die, then spend  a few days or even weeks in the ICU where we would try to save them from sepsis, often unsuccessfully. If they had gone to a primary care doctor early on, a run of antibiotics would have cured them. It was heartbreaking. I also had a patient who was laid off from his job, lost his insurance coverage after 1 month, and then discovered he had a huge brain tumor. Bam, pre-existing condition. And then there was "pass-the-patient." A person would come into the ER at another hospital, they would discover that person didn't have insurance, come up with a reason he or she couldn't stay and divert to a different hospital. I had a patient who went blind because she didn't get the care she needed in time. There is a very real human cost to our health care problems. The money is already in the system, it's just going to million-dollar ICU bills that the hospital has to absorb rather than primary care. I have been very grateful for our health care. If Luke retires, we have coverage for life. That's a huge burden lifted and I'm sad that it can't be a reality for everyone.

I don't think the ideal solution is Obamacare. Healthcare is so complicated and so broken right now that there are definitely going to be some pretty big problems that arise. I do think it is a better solution than what we have going on right now, and so I'm glad that it is being given a chance. I hope that in the future, it can be pruned back and built up until it fits the needs of our country. So I was pretty happy about the decision. I think the way the Supreme Court dealt with the constitutionality of Obamacare was really interesting. I love law. It was my favorite part of Accounting and I seriously thought about law school. But since I was having a hard time with the dubious ethics of the financial world, I wasn't sure it was a very good idea. :) I haven't read the whole decision yet, and I am struggling to understand it, but I'm loving what it is saying about the balance of power between the branches of government and between State and Federal. My favorite line so far: "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices." Zing! This decision will have implications in the future well outside of healthcare. I think the Justices really did their jobs well on this one. It seriously makes me want to go back to school.