It's only fair to say that weakness isn't the only killer. Selfishness, cruelty, and laziness enter into the story of a decline in America. The more we go to church, the worse we get?
Otherwise how could we behave the way so many did over the matter of keeping alive a comatose Terry Schiavo who wanted to die while being utterly callous when it comes to people like John Brodniak? Nicholas Kristof describes what happened.
John is a sawmill worker from Yamhill County, Ore., where I grew up. He was a foreman at a mill, he felt strong and healthy, and he had very basic insurance coverage through his job. On April 18, he was married, at age 23, and life was looking up.
Ten days after the wedding, he was walking in his backyard carrying a neighbor’s dog — and he suddenly blacked out. That led, after rounds of CAT scans, M.R.I.’s and other tests, to the discovery that the left parietal lobe of his brain has a cavernous hemangioma. That’s an abnormal growth of blood vessels, and in John’s case it is chronically leaking blood into his brain.
In constant pain from this devastating but curable condition and with no relief except vomiting, John had to quit his job and eventually, when things got really bad for him, Esther, his wife, had to quit hers. That left them without any health insurance or, indeed, anything to live on. Neighbors have been helping them but the medical community has dropped them.
You know why.
The doctors warn that pressure from the growth could lead a major blood vessel nearby to burst, killing him. “They tell me I’m a time bomb,” John said. With a touch of bitterness, he adds, “It sort of feels as if they’re playing for time to see if it bursts, to save them from doing anything.”
I’m not a physician, and I certainly can’t speak to the medical issues here. But I have examined John’s medical records, and they appear to confirm his story.
John says the principal obstacle to treatment appears to be simply his lack of insurance. In August, he qualified for an Oregon Medicaid program, but he hasn’t been able to find a doctor who will accept him as a patient for surgery, apparently because the reimbursements are so low. Doctors tell him that his condition is operable — but that they can’t accept him without conventional insurance.
But here's where Kristof's story falls apart. He blames the wrong people.
John’s story is not so unusual. A Harvard study, to be published next month in the American Journal of Public Health, suggests that almost 45,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a consequence of not having insurance. John may become one of them.
If a senator strolled indifferently by as John retched in pain, we would think that person pitiless. But isn’t it just as monstrous for politicians to avert their eyes, make excuses and deny coverage to innumerable Americans just like John?
Sure -- Tom Coburn and Joe Lieberman and many other senators have blood on their hands. But so do we. The bottom line is that this isn't about some rogue legislators. It's about us. America is no longer the country of "give me your hungry" and all the "bombs bursting in air" stuff we celebrate on July 4. That was then, this is now. Right now the America we live in is the country of 45,000 John Brodniaks, the doctors who won't help them, and Americans who look the other way.
