It began with a sinus infection. The staff at the urgent care gave me antibiotics to address it, saying nothing about the directive on the label to take a probiotic as well.
Three days later, it began. I won’t go into gruesome detail but let’s just say I very quickly began to wonder how there was anything left to go to the bathroom about. This went on for several days. Another urgent care. This time, they gave me a different prescription. I went to the pharmacist to have it filled. “This is just over-the-counter Imodium,” the pharmacist told me.
I was already taking that, which I had told the staff at the urgent care. So, I had paid $50 and gotten my hopes up for the urgent care to effectively tell me to take a lot of Pepto Bismol.
I called my doctor and scheduled an appointment. Then, a friend told me about his experience with Clostridioides difficile, or C diff. So I called my doctor back and told them I needed to make a decision: go to the ER now or wait until my appointment in the morning.
The first nurse told me something obvious if not particularly helpful: “If you feel bad you can go to the ER.” Thanks, I said, but what I was trying to determine was whether my doctor the next day would even be able to perform the tests needed to identify a case of C diff. She connected me to another nurse who eventually said that, no, my doctor probably wouldn’t be able to conduct the necessary tests to diagnose C diff. So, yes, I should probably go to the ER.
That evening I did, and after a few hours, finally felt like I was talking to someone competent and helpful: the ER doctor on shift at St. Joseph’s Candler in Savannah. But the entire episode — mild by comparison to some healthcare horror stories I’ve heard — was a frustrating reminder of how broken our healthcare system is. Luckily I have a primary care doctor, but if I didn’t I would have had to wait weeks or months to see one. The other option? Urgent cares. We see how well that went.
Yes, I should have know that I had to take probiotics with the antibiotics prescribed by the urgent care. But when I returned almost a week later complaining of stomach pains, diarrhea, the staff there should have sent me to the ER.
Finally, I made the choice that I thought was best for me after a week of serious stomach pain and 20 trips a day to the bathroom: go to the ER. I have insurance, so my bill probably won’t be huge. But the fact that these are the options for most people in this country is a lowdown, cryin’ shame.
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As I waited to be seen at the ER, I scrolled news on my phone and saw that the Trump administration will kick as many as a million people off Obamacare for allegedly committing healthcare fraud. Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said they had found people who had allegedly committed fraud because they had never made a claim through their insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act.
Is that fraud? It doesn’t sound like it to me. This initiative of Vance’s “anti-fraud task force” will save American taxpayers $2.2 billion, Vance and Oz said on Tuesday. That’s about the same amount that Donald Trump made during the first year of his second term in office.
Vance and Oz also said they’re stopping brokers from selling Obamacare insurance plans. That’s in addition to the millions of Americans who are now paying much higher premiums as a result of Republicans’ halting of Obamacare subsidies. Oh, and then there are the 10 states — most of them dominated by Republican majorities in their legislatures and governors’ offices — that have refused to expand Medicaid, which would offer coverage to low income Americans.
My brief but frustrating experience these past two weeks with the healthcare system was one of a handful my wife and I have had in recent years. And I’m one of the lucky ones: I’m a relatively healthy middle-aged man who doesn’t drink or do drugs, eats a moderately healthy diet and exercises. (Yes, I still smoke, and yes, I know… The big quit is coming; I’m just not quite there yet.)
This experience revived a conversation we’ve had before about finding a concierge doctor. Again, luckily, we can probably afford that and it’s worth it to us to make our lives a little easier. I know more than a few people who have gone down this path, but it’s one that isn’t available to many Americans.
It also seems entirely unnecessary for a country as wealthy and powerful as our own. The fact that those in the upper-middle class and above can essentially opt out of all the frustrating madness of the American healthcare system and have their own, somewhat private doctor simply because they can afford it seems like an indicator of how broken things are, in addition to being one of those dystopian signs of late-stage capitalism.
But that’s where things have been going lately. There are plenty of news stories about the concierge doctor trend. A new private medical plan in Connecticut costs $45,000 a year. That’s a lot of money, but I bet you get great service!
As I was dealing with and trying to self-diagnose my malady this past week, I also tried to keep up with work. That meant reading a lot of news and paying attention to what congressional candidates are saying about a variety of issues. One statement stood out among all the rest.
Responding to news that Vance had told congressional Republicans in a closed-door meeting to simply mention the name of Michigan’s Abdul El Sayed in order to scare voters about far-left candidates, the doctor and candidate for one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats said that he didn’t care what Vance said, and that he was focusing on issues that affect Americans.
Instead, El Sayed said that he would continue talking about “gas, groceries, and how hard it is to see a doctor.”
I nodded my head in vociferous agreement when I heard the remark. Maybe there are Republicans on the trail talking about the many and obvious problems with our healthcare system, but I haven’t seen that as much as GOP candidates fear-mongering about “Communists.”
The reality is that every single American has a version of the story you’ve read here today. Many, many Americans have several such stories. And many Americans have even worse stories about their interactions with the healthcare system. Republicans can say they’re trying to fix all of this, but they’ve never really said exactly how they’ll do it.
Trump is trying to lower prescription drug costs. But Republicans have never formulated any credible plan for insuring more Americans, or for making healthcare less expensive and more equitable for low income Americans and the working class.
I know it’s not as bad here as it is in other parts of the world, but I think we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. The Republican plan for healthcare, based on the experiences in my lifetime, appears to be entirely market-driven.
Republican voters can continue to believe their party is working toward a solution, if they choose. But I know I’m not alone in navigating our healthcare system and thinking, “This is the best we got?”
At a certain point, even conservative Americans might be forced to look around them at all that is broken and reckon with the fact that Republicans have no plan to fix it, that their ideological drive to make government as small as possible is also making it ineffective to the point that it’s actively harming how our society functions.
Under Trump, Republican voters might even have to conclude that their party is actively trying to break things. And they’re breaking things not for the benefit of Americans who need to see a doctor, or afford a decent quality of life, but for the wealthiest people and most powerful forces in our society.
To not conclude this after taking part in virtually any part of the American healthcare system is to purposefully ignore the realities of it. And for God’s sakes, don’t get a sinus infection.
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