Case proves need for health reform - lte from a physician

[BridgeTheGap]

(The repubs would respond to this by saying: "We think there is a need for reform too!" never explaining why they did NOTHING to reform the system! btg)

One evening last month I received a phone call from a colleague. I am a resident in Internal Medicine at Louisville's University Hospital, and the call, from another resident working in the hospital that night, was to tell me that a patient I'd discharged to an inpatient facility for physical therapy earlier that day had returned. An ambulance had been driving her to a rehab facility in southeastern Kentucky. After the facility had realized that she didn't have insurance, they called the ambulance driver en route and instructed him to turn around and head back to Louisville. The patient's parents, never contacted, were left waiting all night at the front door of the facility. Their daughter never arrived.

The patient, whom we'll call Jessica, was 21 years old.

She had crescent-shaped eyes and fair skin. Her room smelled of strawberries from the scented spray she keeps at her bedside. Two months earlier, Jessica had delivered a baby girl. She had never had insurance, but while she was pregnant until six weeks afterwards, qualified for Passport, Kentucky's version of Medicaid.

Just three weeks after this insurance had expired, she suddenly developed a serious neurological condition that paralyzed her legs and diaphragm, making it impossible for her to walk and breathe. She was intubated and spent three weeks in the ICU on a ventilator. By the time I began taking care of her, she'd been transferred out of the ICU, was breathing on her own, but her speech was slurred and she was hardly able to move her legs. It was clear that Jessica needed aggressive physical therapy.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100331/OPINION02/3310376/1018/OPINION/Case+proves+need+for+health+reform

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Wonderful letter. I wonder why so few doctors spoke up like this.