Let’s Take a Deep Breath

Now let’s imagine what we want our health care to be like.

I’ll start.
I want to immediately clone my all-time favorite and best doctor, who unfortunately has now retired. Here’s how I described this excellent physician back in 2007:

Once upon a time, I had as my primary care physician, a doctor of medicine who really was a prince. He always shook my hand and made eye contact. He would always sit down and chat for awhile with my husband and me about anything and everything that was happening in our lives. He believed in all that modern western medicine had to offer and was open to everything else that was well intentioned in this world. He knew and cared about our lives (work, pets, hobbies, extended families, politics, emotions...) and told us about his own. He believed the body was a temple and that it was important for him to treat it with respect. He saved me from at least one major surgery by proceeding with prudence, caution and riding herd over less experienced, less intuitive and less wise doctors. We were partners in my healthcare. Did I mention he had call hours at home every weekday morning for a half an hour? Or the fact that he made house calls to his elderly patients? A prince!

Yes, I want everyone to have a doctor who is one part Marcus Welby, one part Andrew Weil and 100% talented, knowledgeable and, above all, human.

Next, I want affordable health insurance for everyone - that includes prescription drug coverage. Heck, while we’re at it, throw in dental insurance too. Which if you think about it, it is pretty odd that one part of our body has to have separate insurance from all the other parts. Especially since we know that the best medicine treats the whole of the human being. And, yes, I want plenty of choices of insurance coverage too. That choice extends to employers, in particular small business owners, who want to offer health insurance coverage to their employees, but don’t want the premiums to suck up all their profit and stifle their growth.

After discussions with a family member who is a primary care physician, I know I also want state of the art, computerized medical records. I want the doctors (as described above) to be able to glance down at a laptop and pull up their patient’s prescription history, allergies, lab work - the whole nine yards. I want them all to have the ultrasounds, X-Rays, EEGs and any other test results and specialists’ reports accessible through that same laptop. That should cut down on repetitive and duplicative paperwork on the part of not only doctors but patients as well.

I want my 85 year old Mom and all her contemporaries to keep their current Medicare coverage. Streamlining it to improve it and provide higher quality, less cumbersome and less expensive care would be great. Thinking about elderly relatives, after having spent many hours with family members discussing ordinary versus extraordinary means and all aspects of end of life care, I know not all families are prepared for these conversations. So encouraging folks to have a conversation with their doctor about a living will and health care proxies and having that sort of office visit covered by insurance is a very good idea.

What I really want is a level playing field. I don’t want any negative implications of geography, previous health conditions, education or income to be impediments to affordable, accessible health care. Nor do I want the reverse of those circumstances to provide charmed access for a select few.

Lastly, I also want to clone the brilliant care givers who took care of Chuck’s Dad in his last year, so everyone could be so compassionately attended to in their final days. But I think even my imagination is beggared by that impossibly high standard.

What do you want?