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Healthcare at its Worst!? or Do We Call this Our Best

by Stephanie Smith
Stephanie Smith is a junior at Sonoma State University. She majored in the social sciences due to my strong approach to many social issues and her vocal demand for what is right although, The passion lies within the Community Pharmacy Sector and will be going on to graduate school to obtain her PharmD.
Healthcare at its Worst! Or is it the Best?

Stephanie Smith
An elder lady about fifty-five, falls to the ground trying to walk up the stairs, her breath was slow and shallow merely inexistent. The emergency trip to the hospital showed no ailments in this hellish attack. Many years later, ten to be exact another episode consumed her body. With this attack further diagnostics were ordered, such as a cat scan showed a large tumorous mass which engulfed her left lung. Her heart sank, voice weakened and body collapsed as it had just days before. The devastating new s given to her was hardest most mystifying thing she had ever heard. Mesothelioma, the cancer derived from asbestos exposure, anywhere from thirty to forty five years prior to its discovery had invaded her body long ago and will now take her life. This healthy sixty-five year young lady, is now given no more than six months to live, if that’s what you call a life; hardly being able to walk, no climbing stairs, no playing with your grandchildren or even laying down to go to sleep at night. She had come to terms with this cancer and understood what it will do to her and her body, what she wasn’t ready for was the talk with her family. A once vibrant, vocal and brilliant lady now, hunched over breathless trying to explain to her children, grandchildren and family why this horrid mass had taken over her body. Almost lifeless, she explained to her family, cancer doesn’t choose a person by their looks, their lives or their giving. The question “why” just did resound within her being to answer. She said “I am no different than any other person in this world, I am not special to this cancer, I will go home to be with Jesus and I am ok with that.” This wonderful woman, my grandmother, had received her death certificate so young in life, and for what, the inability to of our healthcare providers to run a few more tests? My grandmother, close to being a test animal, just wonders if one more test ten years earlier could have saved her very short life. Today we are faced with many healthcare needs and few healthcare facilities and providers. Socially, it is acceptable to over look diagnoses, disease and trauma with the lack of time spent with patients. Could many lives be saved if we gave just a few more minutes to further research, a second look, or a second test? Will this healthcare reform Obamacare really provide these needed sectors of care, the extra test or the extra minute it might take to catch a life threatening illness? No, Obamacare is not user friendly; this reform is money interested and invested. Lets not wait, stop this reform.

The war on terror seems little and incomparable, when there are innocent people right here in our country dying from an overlooked diagnosis or a test not preformed. We as a country need to set in motion a healthcare reform, we need to get rid of Obama Care and create our own demands, guidelines and prices. When people’s lives are at stake there is no amount of compensation to get them back. As stated on OPEDNews.com, “Dr. Dotson believes that Obamacare will result in Medicare being blended into some type of corporatist insurance product bringing higher costs and fewer benefits to patients. It will be a "health system" that funnels federal revenues into insurance company profits instead of into health care.” (Roberts Nov. 12) We are releasing our elders and their care into money seeking and power hungry people who don’t shed those tears for those whose lives have been taken. These are the people who have raised us, inspired us and loved us. We must do the same and fight for everyone’s right to health care, with no one telling us what services we can get, how much will be covered or what we will have to live without. When is the public going to stand up for one another, their loved ones and their own self, and demand to be seen and heard for healthcare reform? Everyday someone in this country will see a loved one die. Could we have prevented these horrid happenings? As Dave Lindorff exclaims on OPEDNews.com, “Those namby-pamby, self-described "progressives" in the Democratic Party who claim that the health bill can still be saved with the inclusion of a fake, carefully circumscribed and thoroughly emasculated "public option" government insurance plan that at best would only be able to offer lousy coverage at high rates to a small number of self-employed poor people are wrong.” (Lindorff Dec. 09) We as a people need to step up and speak out; this healthcare reform will be death to our elderly, poor and uninsured. Not even for my healthcare but for my loved ones, I will be declining and protesting this reform until the public can stand up for what is right and get rid of this nasty Obamacare. If we do not act we will see many more innocents die each and everyday, lets get them the healthcare they want, need and deserve.
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