Health care for the rest of us

IN RESPONSE to "Will the ER doors close to the poor?": When I visited an ER as a patient last summer with an abscessed tooth, I sat in the triage section for several hours and the phrase that jumped to mind was "health care for all the rest."

I'd lost my insurance when I got too sick to work, and couldn't afford the six-month retroactive COBRA payment they asked for in order to keep my coverage.

In Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, he explains that the long waits at public hospitals are because of the segregation of the health care system into two tracks--one for those who can pay and one for those who can't.

I looked around the waiting room, built for "instead"--for all of the people who came to the ER instead of a regular clinic or doctor, because they didn't have one. Even a staffer seemed demoralized, calling our voices so softly that people missed their chance to see a doctor.

In the last period, just when the demand for services had increased, the hospital workers had faced hundreds of layoffs. I wondered if this was how people in the Superdome felt after Hurricane Katrina.

At 9 p.m., the shelter people came through to gather up those who actually needed an indoor bed, and had bided their time in the waiting room. At 9:30 p.m., a man already in a hospital gown was called to see the doctor--and the people around him cheered. Finally. He'd been waiting since 6:30 a.m., the time you're supposed to get there in order to miss the lines.

As a low-priority patient who only needed pain relief, I'd wait for some time. I decided to look for some other solution, and left my less-lucky fellow patients to get comfortable for the night.

Riding home on the train, I met someone offering suggestions for where else to go. He told me about getting on waiting lists for dental care. I realized why this man in his early forties looked so much older. He'd had all his teeth removed, and not replaced, when someone made a decision for him about what he could afford.

Could we send all those people--the hospital board members who vote for the cuts, the insurance moguls, the members of Congress and corporate rulers--to the ER of a public hospital the next time they get sick? Just once.
Tina Beacock, Chicago