I wrote the following but the New York Times passed.  I encourage my US friends to send it to their legislators if they agree (www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm or http://www.house.gov/).

Studying healthcare politics from the outside looking in has been absolutely surreal.  As a 30-something Acromegaly patient and advocate, I am lucky to have a job with good insurance.  Without insurance, I would spend more than $50,000 per year just on my medication alone, so it is fair to say that I have an active interest in the results of this fight.  What I can’t decide is which side to root for.  It seems like the political thinkers have divided into two camps with a huge chasm in between.  The real issue for me is that I don’t think either side is totally trustworthy.

On one side of healthcare you have the national government.  Let’s be realistic.  Every method of federal healthcare currently available has is flirting with financial disaster.  Moreover, federal insurance programs have left physicians floating in a sea of bureaucracy, paperwork, rules, and regulations.  Politicians use federal healthcare to buy votes from the old and infirmed, using it as both a carrot and a stick.

On the other side you have private health care.  Here you have bureaucracies that are equally overwhelming to the doctors, but the financial reality is far darker than ruin; it is greed.  Insurance companies are looking for any reason to not cover medical expenses submitted by the very patients they actively recruit.  Patients pay hefty premiums for years, never using their insurance for anything more than the occasional flu shot or random Emergency Room visit.  But they keep paying just in case, hoping it will be there if they need it.  Sadly, that is when insurance companies find a way to jack up their insurance rates or simply drop the patient from their coverage.  And if they are lucky enough to keep their insurance, too many patients find that the company is seemingly more willing to spend money deflecting their claim than paying the bill.  Moreover, healthcare companies happily pay disgusting sums of money to law firms-worth of lawyers, executives receiving 8-figure salaries, and lobbyists throwing influence all over Washington, DC.  Why?  All of this is in hopes of protecting themselves from having to set a precedent by paying an extra dollar for grandma’s aspirin in the nursing home.

So what’s our legislators to do?  Force everybody onto national healthcare?  Keep the status quo?  I think there needs to be a third option?  A more real option that will hopefully help everybody.  The House and Senate need to create an advisory panel made up of legislators from BOTH sides of the aisle, medical leaders within insurance industries from both the government and private healthcare, medical practitioners, and especially patients familiar with healthcare issues.  They need to meet seriously and come up with real strategies and options that provides quality healthcare to the weakest of our society without punishing private industry or the wealthy.  This can be done if our leadership is willing to do it.

Wayne Brown

Founder AcromegalyCommunity.com