The Cost of Health Care

Along with a lot of other people, I assume, I watched the final debate between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president. I wasn’t expecting much, if any, new information on which to base my vote in three weeks. And I wasn’t expecting to be kept awake during the night mulling over my personal relationship to a current national issue.

I injured my right arm last December, swinging open the wooden gate across our driveway. It was a familiar gesture, a swinging and twisting motion, letting go at the last moment of the metal rod that digs into the ground to hold the gate in position. A sharp pain shot through my arm up to the elbow, and I doubled over, clutching the arm and gasping. The only previous experience I’d had with that kind of pain was thirty years before when I sprained my ankle getting up off the living room floor after having been sitting on my foot for a while playing with my kids. Not realizing that my foot had gone to sleep, I tried to stand on it, instead standing on my ankle. I heard a sharp snap, and fell back to the floor, nearly fainting. The children were shocked and frightened.

This time, I made my way back into the house and nursed the arm for a while, testing it to make sure nothing was broken. I wrapped it in a heating pad, and after a while the pain eased, but it took several days before I could use my arm.

Then, a month later, I was taking the garbage can out to the curb one evening, and swung it by its handle up onto the snow at the side of the driveway. The same twisting and swinging motion—and the same sharp pain.

This time it didn’t go away completely, and I visited my doctor. He diagnosed it as probably a carpel tunnel problem, and told me to wear a wrist brace at night. After a couple of weeks it wasn’t better, so I phoned for an appointment at one of the local physical medicine clinics specializing in sports injuries. The Osteopath who examined me prescribed some x-rays, but admitted that my symptoms didn’t match anything he knew about. The x-rays came back negative for bone breaks, so the doctor set me up with a series of physical therapy sessions. Those helped, particularly since I had by that time lost a lot of muscle tone due to lack of exercise.

But the pain kept coming back. I did some searching on the Internet, and found an orthopedic web site that had illustrated articles on such conditions as golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow, both of which seemed to fit my problem. On reporting my findings to my regular doctor, I got an offer of cortisone shots, but no real help. Since I had seen the other doctor without a referral from him, my doctor seemed uninterested in my arm.

Since then, I have tried to keep up the exercises taught me by the physical therapist, and my arm doesn’t always hurt. I avoid lifting with it and especially avoid sudden motions. I’ve often thought of contacting a surgeon who several years ago had repaired my torn rotator cuff, with complete success.

Back to the presidential debate. The candidates spent a lot of time discussing (to use the word loosely) "the soaring cost of health care." Their focus was upon how the country is going to pay for the increased costs, especially with the growth of retirement-aged citizens who apparently need more health care. The subject of "health care rationing" was carefully avoided. But that’s what kept me awake that night.

Like most people, I suppose, I have mixed feelings about doctors, dentists and hospitals. I want them to be there when I need them, but I don’t enjoy having to go there. I spent a day and night in the hospital last summer after an attack of amnesia. They tested me and admitted me overnight to make sure I hadn’t suffered a stroke. It turned out that it was related to migraine headaches, and was not serious, nor was it likely to recur. My insurance, including Medicare, paid out over two thousand dollars. Several years ago, my rotator cuff surgery set the insurance companies back a lot more than that.

Both of those incidents were pretty clearly "medically necessary." I might have survived had I not had the surgery, but my arm would have been rather useless for a long time, perhaps for life. The amnesia attack would have gone away by itself without any professional help, but we didn’t know that at the time.

While I think that my present situation is not life-threatening, it sure limits my activities. Since I’m no longer in the work force, it’s not a matter of productivity. I can still feed and clothe myself, and even drive a car. Pain killers allow me to sleep when I need them. My Medicare and medigap insurance would no doubt pay for the surgery. If I lived in Canada, or some other country where the government supplies health care to everyone, I don’t know whether they’d say I needed surgery or not.

The big question: Given the growing problem of how to care for our country’s citizens without bankrupting us, do I have any responsibility, other than to vote in the elections? While the debates seemed to suggest that the President is the one to solve the problem, it’s clear that no one person can do that. It’s very much like the breakdown of our environment—government policies may have a lot of influence, but there has to be a cultural shift in how we all look at our natural resources. "It’s not my problem," is too easy when all I’m doing is running my lawn mower on a warm summer day. "It’s not my problem," when I throw tin cans in with my household trash. "It’s not my problem," when I drive somewhere that is easily accessible by public transportation. "I pay my taxes," may ease my conscience when I add to the overload in a public park. When I pay my health insurance premium, particularly to Medicare, what is the difference between what I want and what I need?

Social Security is cut and dried, in comparison. When I reached the magic age, I applied for and began receiving my pension, an amount calculated by the government based not on need but on amounts I paid into the plan from past income. Only if I had enough wealth to live independently of that pension would I have reason to consider whether or not to take it. I happen to have no choice. But Medicare is different. Some people are fortunate enough to need little of it, and others need a lot. If everybody needed a lot, the program would quickly collapse.

So how much do I need surgery on my poor arm? They asked me, when I took it in for physical therapy, "How much does it hurt?" They offered the idea of a scale, from one to ten, and asked me for a number to represent my pain. Ten is unbearable; one is but a twinge. It depends, of course, on when I am asked. Some days it’s better than others.

And, of course, I don’t know for certain whether surgery will return my arm to normal, as it did my shoulder. Suppose I spend ten thousand dollars of Medicare money, and I still can’t lift a gallon of milk into the refrigerator. Is that ten thousand dollars the proverbial straw that does the camel in? Probably not. Does it mean that someone truly needy will be refused service? It’s conceivable.

The dilemma, difficult as it might be to resolve, is almost trivial compared with the really big medical decisions physicians have to make—how much to spend on someone who is riddled with cancer, for example? What is the patient’s age? What are their chances of a "normal" life afterward? Let me put it baldly: Somewhere, someone at some point must decide: Is this person worth what it will cost to repair them? I’m glad I don’t have to make such decisions. I don’t want even to suggest a way for anyone else to make such decisions. I need only to decide whether to ask for my arm to be repaired. At my age, I have a relatively good chance of dying from any of a number of ailments in the next year.

Having gone through this process, having questioned and thought and felt the implications of this subject, I feel I’ve done my duty as a citizen, and will go to the polls in a couple of weeks armed with a bit more insight, if nothing else, about the issues involved in the election.

And for now, at least, I’ll keep exercising my arm. I can handle the physical inconvenience.

Donald Skiff, October 15, 2004

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