Imagine if you will, you are walking down the street. A quarter is in front of you next to a parking meter on the ground. You lean down. You pick it up and put it into your pocket. It jingles with the other change. You get into your Lexus and drive downtown to your office. Your wife calls. Michael, your fourteen year old hurt his leg playing soccer. She's driving him to the hospital for xrays and treatment. Your orthopedist, who is the doc for the local pro football team, will be waiting when you arrive. Healthcare at its best. You don't give it a thought. You just hope your son's leg is o.k. You and your family are safe and taken care of.
Imagine if you will, you are walking down the street and find a nickel on the ground next to a grocery store. You pick it up and put it in your pocket and it joins the dime that you have there. You came from your job making ten dollars an hour, don't have a car, take the bus to and from work. There is something wrong with your eye. It has been a little blurry for the past two days. Maybe your getting a cold. Maybe something is worse than that. If it is the same tomorrow, you will go to the free clinic that is open on Tuesday nights. Good thing because you can't afford to go to a doctor, don't have one and can't afford half a day off anyway. You have to make ten dollars an hour to pay your rent at the end of the month.
Imagine, if you will that there is a penny on the ground. As you lean over to pick it up, that pain that you have in your low back causes pain to run down the back or your leg. You pick up the penny anyway. You can't do anything like go to a clinic, don't know about it, and if you did, you don't want them to really tell you what is wrong with your back because you can't afford to do anything about it anyway. You remember that the last time you went to a clinic, three years ago, they made you wait for two hours and you didn't feel treated with respect because you were not well dressed and didn't understand very well how to fill out the forms because your don't write and read well.
You don't have to imagine. All of this happened today. And it doesn't matter which day. Pick one, it's happening now. How do they feel. Each one, how do they feel. Is health care broken? Is it available, are they safe? Will their children receive care, will their eye get worse, can they afford time away from the work they may get on any given day to do more than hope that the pain in their leg will go away?
The world looks different for each. A quarter, a nickel, a penny. Different lives. Different safety. Fear for some, not for others. Is there good health care for us all: Yes for some, moderate for others and missing for many. We can only know how to find new ways to deliver care when we know of and recognize the disparities and realities for people we have never met.
We have to be thinking about them. We won't change much if we don't. What will each of us do about this? It's a Monday morning. A time as good as any to think about this. Who knows when one of us will come up with some unexpected ideas that will make a difference. What will I do? And, what will you?
R.Fisher, M.D., CEO, Future of Health Care Forums Tm Copyright (c)rfisher2007
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