FINDING A FACE
IN ALL THOSE NUMBERS
Journal of Healing – Jan. 28, 2004

By Mary Koch

The trouble with statistics is that they’re just numbers; they have no face.

I was immersed in the statistics issued recently by the Institute of Medicine in its report called, "Insuring America’s Health: Principles and Recommendations." The number of uninsured Americans is up again: 43 million now. About 18,000 unnecessary deaths occur each year as a result. The poor health and early deaths of the uninsured cost the nation up to $130 billion a year.

A knock on the door pulled me away from the numbers. We were having our roof repaired, and one of the workmen needed help finding an outdoor power source.

We chatted as I located the plug for his extension cord.

"Things sure have changed since we started this job," he commented.

"Yes?" I answered.

"Found out I have leukemia."

Things certainly had changed for him forever. His diagnosis would be the continental divide in his life. There would be his life before leukemia and his life after leukemia.

My husband’s stroke was the continental divide in our lives. Before the stroke, I used to curl up with a good mystery for recreational reading. Now I curl up with reports on health care policy.

* * *

I ASKED THE workman what his course of treatment would be. He said he would find that out the next day, but he had already been assured that he had the "good kind" of leukemia – one that is successfully treatable.

Medical technology has indeed come a long way if we now have "good" kinds of leukemia. Unfortunately, other parts of our health care system haven’t come along as well. The workman said he hoped the treatments wouldn’t be too extensive because just getting the diagnosis cost thousands of dollars.

"I don’t have insurance," he explained.

Now I was seeing a face instead of just numbers. One face in 43 million. One of the 80 percent of uninsured Americans who work but don’t get medical insurance through their employment.

That’s what we get for insisting upon an employment-based insurance system without insisting that employers provide the insurance, or giving them a way to provide it.

* * *

IN HIS STATE of the Union address last week, President Bush said this country needs to "preserve the system of private medicine that makes America’s health care the best in the world."

One has to wonder what the basis for this claim is.

The World Health Organization ranks the U.S. 37th for health care among the nations of the world.

The Institute of Medicine – a private, non-partisan arm of the National Academies – says only the federal government can fix the nation’s problem of caring for the uninsured. The institute even set a deadline for the President and Congress to achieve universal health care: the year 2010.

I pray that the workman will be cured and back on his job by then, but he’ll probably still be paying off the cost of his treatment. Or he’ll declare bankruptcy, which some 600,000 people do annually because of medical bills. One more statistic with a face.

A non-partisan presidential commission a while back reported that our health care system is headed for an implosion. Dr. David Weber, CEO of Wenatchee Valley Medical Center, wrote recently that all the elements are present in our health care system for a "perfect storm."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorialized last week that it is more important to fix health care than to fund human travel to the Moon and Mars.