Doctors For America

Submitted as a Letter to the Editor:

It is so discouraging to think that this country is going to stop on the brink of actual reform of our health care delivery system. For the past 35 years I have been an Emergency Medicine physician. Each day I see the devastating effects of the lack of a health care system in this country.

Daily I see the problems caused by our lack of a coherent broad-based health system. Here are some of the patients I have seen lately:
- A woman with asthma moved from another state, but had a 6-month wait to get into a Community Health Clinics. When she ran out of her medications, she had one four-day hospitalization for an asthma flare. She was back to the ER just a month later, sick again after she ran out the medications she was discharged with and can’t afford to refill.
- A 60-year-old woman was diagnosed more than 4 years ago with cancer. She couldn’t afford the MRI to figure out why she was going blind in one eye, couldn’t afford chemotherapy, and was lost to follow-up for 3 years. Now she is deaf, blind in one eye, near death, with her husband alone taking care of her during this whole time.
- A man with a dental abscess was told how much it would cost to extract his tooth but he couldn’t afford it. He delayed a month, hoping to get the money together, but needed admission to the intensive care unit for a blood stream infection because it had gone on so long. He knew exactly what was needed, but just couldn’t afford the simple solution.

This country has debated enough. Don’t just listen to the constituents with the loudest voices. I ask Mr. Polis, Senators Bennet, Udall and the rest of our Congress to do what they were elected to do – to make tough choices that benefit this country’s future economic and physical health, and that of our children.

Jean Abbott, MD
Emergency Medicine & Ethics
Anschutz Medical Center
Aurora, CO