{"id":234,"date":"2012-06-25T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T16:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=234"},"modified":"2012-06-25T12:35:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T16:35:00","slug":"money-or-your-life-nytimes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=234","title":{"rendered":"Money or Your Life – NYTimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Money or Your Life – NYTimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Critics of the Affordable Care Act argue that many Americans neither want nor need health insurance, and that it forces them to pay for coverage against their will. But just as the government collects taxes to pay police officers and firefighters, the individual mandate compels Americans to pay for a service they may not immediately want but could at any time desperately require.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Much of the debate has focused on the role of government in everyday life. I don\u2019t discount the value of that question, but my focus is on real needs. I treat patients with $20,000 <\/alt-code>chemotherapy<\/classifier> injections or monthly doses of IV immunotherapy that cost $10,000 a bag. If they don\u2019t receive these drugs my patients will die, so to me, the most pressing issue here is compassion. Without change, the patients will resemble the man with leukemia, human beings without insurance terrified that their lives aren\u2019t worth what it will cost to save them, all because of a broken but fixable system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Crowds at conservative rallies have, astoundingly, cheered the idea that uninsured people should, if they become ill or badly hurt, be left for dead. It\u2019s easy to imagine such a thing in the heat of a rhetorical moment. But the reality is, I hope, harder to embrace. Because reality means a real person \u2014 you, me, someone we know \u2014 condemned to a possibly preventable death because, for whatever reason, they don\u2019t have insurance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My patient with leukemia is dead. He got the best care money could buy, but his disease only briefly went into remission and he went home on <\/alt-code>hospice care<\/classifier>. Should he, because he did not buy insurance, have been denied this chance for a cure?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Affordable Care Act is not the health care solution everyone wants, but when patients wish for death panels as a response to leukemia, something needs to be done, and soon. This plan would help any patient facing a tough diagnosis not view treatment as a choice between his money or his life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Theresa Brown is an oncology nurse and the author of \u201cCritical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have had similar discussions with those who are not in healthcare as their profession.  They cannot seem to see the distinction between cutting people off who did not buy insurance, for whatever reason, and actually carrying out this virtual death sentence. We, as medical professionals, just cannot do this. Therefore, we need to figure out how to have universal access to care and universal insurance coverage. ObamaCare is a very good start.<\/i><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Money or Your Life – NYTimes.com Critics of the Affordable Care Act argue that many Americans neither want nor need health insurance, and that it forces them to pay for … Continue reading “Money or Your Life – NYTimes.com”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,77,33,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-access-to-treatment","category-ayn-rand","category-rationing-health-care","category-social-justice"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}