Not everyone has the same choices in health care

They say there are two sides to every story, so here goes. On one side there’s a little girl crying because her ear hurts and a dad and a mom trying to figure out where the money will come from to make it stop. On the other side, there’s a president, born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, whose only concern with money has been whether to spend it, invest it or ask Daddy for more.

Yeah, you see where this is going.
Which makes the likely outcome all the more pitiful.

If you haven’t been following the news, here’s the deal: President Bush is poised to veto (or, by the time you read this has already vetoed) a bill that would help pay the health insurance for that little girl and a lot of kids in her situation. To my knowledge, Mr. Bush’s family has never lacked for health insurance coverage nor for the wherewithal to pay for it.

There are a lot of American families who can’t make that claim.

Let me tell you — and the president — a little about one of them. Mine.

Like most families, there’s not much drama in our story — no massive injury or dread disease. We had three jobs, two kids and plenty of what our Republican friends now call health care choices. Since none of those three jobs came with an insurance plan, we first got to choose between food and rent or a private health insurance policy. While we were certain that winter was coming and we all got hungry on a predicable schedule, we went for what the Bush White House might term the “faith-based option” — we just prayed that nobody would get sick.

Of course, as any good Christian knows, from time to time the Lord is wont to test our faith. In our case with a routine assortment of colds, flu and, especially, earaches. But, as I’m sure Congresswoman Bachmann would be happy to know, under our free-market system we still had plenty of health care choices: we were free to go to the supermarket and choose between Advil, Tylenol, Dimetapp or Robitussin. If we had no choice but to take the kid to the doctor, we got to choose between an overdraft notice or not paying the electric bill.

Let me tell ya, choice in health care isn’t all that the insurance lobby has it cracked up to be. Especially when your kid is crying and there’s nothing you can afford to do to make it better.

We were lucky. There wasn’t much drama in our story and, in time, the right doors opened and, thanks to the magic of a sizable payroll deduction, our family too could have teeth fixed, bones set, drugs prescribed and colons-oscopied — all for the price of a premium, a co-pay and a deductible.

But there are plenty of families who haven’t been so lucky. I hear self-righteous people declare that health care isn’t a right. But in a country that at its founding dared to declare “all men are created equal,” it shouldn’t be an arbitrary privilege either.

And for children, too often that is what it amounts to. Those who are wise in their choice of parents benefit from pre-natal care, well-baby visits, routine immunizations and regular checkups. When an ear hurts, they see a doctor.

Others, whose parents work hard but make too little or whose occupation doesn’t provide access to that all-important “group benefit plan,” get choices. When an ear hurts, they get Tylenol, a heating pad and hopeful thoughts. When, at 2 a.m., it really, really hurts, they get to wait until the walk-in

clinic opens; paying for an emergency room visit is beyond the family means. And when the nurse at the walk-in is confronted with a situation beyond her authority to treat, a referral is arranged and the child will see a doctor, get a prescription and, as soon as the symptoms subside, Mom will cut short the treatment, hoarding the remaining antibiotic for “next time.”

Plenty of choices, but no good ones.

At the risk of being callous, I sure wish Mr. Bush knew that feeling, knew what it’s like to make those choices. Because that’s what it really comes down to, you know: Three people in the dark of the night, and the littlest has an earache.

And a president who just doesn’t care.

Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3522 or

jchristenson@winona

dailynews.com.

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