Apocalypse Now or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Job
The election is over. We have cast our votes and in another popular vote upset, the electoral college won. Our forefathers were wise for the late 1700’s, but it’s obvious our pollsters from the 2010’s are not. The protesters have taken to the streets, and fear has replaced anxiety. There is fear of worsening xenophobia, mass deportations, and a runaway government dominated by conservative lawmakers.
But wait. This is America, damn it. We have had controversial leaders in the past, many leaders who have insisted it was their way or the highway. As a matter of fact, our current President led a democratically held Congress to pass one of the most controversial and overarching healthcare bills ever written. And it has been under that cloud that those of us providing healthcare services have continued to toil under.
This President insists on repealing and replacing that legislation. When is this seesaw going to balance out so that we can just get to the business of helping people? Or, more importantly, when is the US government going to get out of the business of legislating healthcare, and let those of us involved in it figure it out? When you want to find out how a fight is going, don’t ask a Senator. Ask the soldier on the front line!
I have subscribed to the notion of healthcare as a basic human right. From the dawn of Human, there have been healers whom we’ve sought to help us through our ailments. Whether they be shaman, medicine men, medics, or doctors, we have upheld the notion that when someone is sick, we should help them in any way we can. Sometimes we got paid in chickens. Sometimes in just simple respect and deference. We get paid in cash now as a means of barter and trade. The question has not been whether or not we, as healers, should be rewarded. It’s been simply how we have been rewarded. And since we can’t pay our student loans in chickens, it has been cash to date.
The thing that drives me the most in my care of patients has been their improvement. My goal is always to improve their lives so that they may enjoy them. And if their “pursuit of happiness” is my pursuit as well, then my delivery of the tenets of healthcare is my enablement of their basic human right to pursue that happiness. And therefore, healthcare is a basic human right.
No matter who occupies the White House or the halls of Congress, they have a duty to respect the human in all of us. When I have a patient in my office, I do not care if they are white, African-American, Asian, Middle Eastern or Latino, except how it applies to their genetic risk for disease. I do not care if they are here as naturally born citizens or have entered the country illegally to seek a better life for their family or are escaping tyranny. Their religion only affects me in the means that I may interact with them, but not the fact that they are human underneath the Habit, Kasaya, Hijab, or suit. Sexual orientation and gender perception only concern me in overall health and psychosocial risk. In all, we are all composed of 23 chromosomal pairs, defining our biologic humanity.
Those in Washington must recognize that ours is the noblest of professions. It is a life of self-sacrifice we have chosen. Without our healers, people wither and die unnecessarily. And rather than leveraging what they perceive is our weakness, which is that we will do what we do no matter how difficult they make it for us to do that, they need to show us some goddamn respect. They need to seek our counsel and opinions before they change anything having to do with how healthcare is delivered. They need to make it easier, not harder, for people to obtain healthcare. They need to make it so that people don’t need to choose between food, shelter, clothing, or healthcare. That is the system we live in now, and many are not able to satisfy their god given rights.
For what is more human than to live, love and pursue happiness. For me, I live medicine. I love medicine. And delivering healthcare makes me happy. This government cannot deny me those things. And it must not deny those things to our patients. It is their Constitutional mandate.
Retired Computer Information Systems Faculty
8 年You are my Doctor and I too love my job and my students. They are so diverse that sometimes I feel as though I teach at a UN school. Here is what I wrote prior to discovering your article. I did not even mention my Islamic students from here and abroad and what they are going through. I had developed a following of Islamic students from abroad and was getting many cousins from the same families. I am down to two and they barely attend class. "My gut has been doing what it is designed to do when sensing danger. I cannot even hide away from it in my classroom, as I am prone to do. A student of mine was called away last month, without any notice, for pre-deployment training in Central America. He is a full-time student, or was. The tensions in families of DREAMers and those of mixed citizenship, where half of the siblings were born here and are US citizens, this is all seeping into my classroom. My guard is up! I stand ready. God help us all. My tummy hurts all the time." How do you practice medicine with an administration that is making us sick and taking away health care options?
Medical Director
8 年…Excellent article , it's what we are all thinking just a little shy to express. Thanks for your honesty!!
Family Physician
8 年Extremely well written and expressed!
Owner/Partner at Adams, Habern, & Gray, CPAs, PLLC
8 年Excellent article!
Everyone Deserves a Family Physician
8 年Andrew, well thought out and heartfelt analysis. I am with you, my brother.