Health Care in the U.S. Take Two Aspirins and Pray

In the past several years Jim and I haven’t seen much of each other. I having swapped in my tools for a computer and keyboard, while Jim, at just over 60 years of age, is still carting heavy, thirty and forty foot ladders around the old houses applying paint at heights that would make most homeowners faint if they ever could muster the courage to get that far off the ground.

I saw Jim the other day and he told me a story that brought home to me exactly all that is wrong with health care in our country.

It seems Jim was having trouble setting up one of the huge class III forty-foot ladders. Now I have done this trick far too often during my life so I know what Jim was talking about. You have to catch the bottom of the ladder into the soil or against something solid as you walk the ladder upright. There is a moment just before the ladder reaches perpendicular where you have to give it all you have or it will come crashing back down on you or the house or perhaps even a car parked too close to the job. Jim almost lost it, until with a supreme effort in his old body; he pushed the ladder upright against the house.

Now Jim, like all of us old timers had to take a break after getting this chore complete and he told me he felt a tug across his chest and thought he might have pulled a chest muscle while grappling with the monster now ready to carry him up the house.

It didn’t bother him much at first but as the day went on, he felt a fire in his chest and a deep pressure against his upper body all the way from right to left. Now in our group of old timers, there are three of us who over the years have had serious problems with our hearts. Two contractors felt so bad on the job that they dropped what they were doing and drove to the local hospital knowing something was wrong. They both had by-pass surgery that night. A third, much younger man than Jim and I, almost died at home when an arterial  blockage came on him while he was watching the news. Only his son, thinking fast enough to call 911 as soon as he saw his dad turn as pale as a bed sheet, saved his life.

As all this went through Jim’s mind, he went to his truck, took two aspirins and started praying that the pain he was feeling was just another pulled muscle. To try and bargain better with his body, he took the pack of cigarettes that was the latest in a caravan of forty years of smokes and crumbled them up and threw them away. He said he tried to make a deal with God, that if this pain passed and he could finish the job, he would take better care of himself, save the best he could considering the job he did for a living.

Now I can happily tell you Jim is fine. He didn’t have a heart attack and he finished the house and his taxes were paid.

As I listened to Jim, I thought of how so many just like him, just like us, face similar problems every day. If Jim didn’t work and didn’t care to, he could receive free medical care. Jim does work and although it is just enough to get by, it prevents him from receiving any assistance at all. Unlike many wealthy Americans, he can’t afford to have a battery of tests to see how he is when something doesn’t feel just right. Instead he will have to wait until the day comes when that pain in his chest is more than he can stand and he drives himself to the hospital if indeed he can.

As I finished talking to Jim, I knew that Jim’s story could easily be mine. It could easily be yours. And that is the shame in all this.