If we don't act on health care, we'll be acted upon

By DR. MICHAEL M. WARREN

My father taught me many things. One thing he taught me is “never discuss sex or politics in public.” That is pretty tough advice for a urologist to follow. There will be “no” sex in this column. But, I thought I would get into politics for a little bit.
You may have noticed that there is a great deal of discussion regarding health care in this country. Many people are concerned about the future of their health care. This is a justifiable concern with the current state of the economy. The availability of care, the cost of care and the quality of care are all uncertain. We are looking to our leaders, including local, state and national, to sort out the issues and come up with answers to our questions and concerns.

And what do we find? We find a complete range of opinions as to what our problems are and how to solve them. Laws are passed. Laws passed are at risk of being repealed. There is a complete range of solutions to the problems and not much satisfaction that any of them are the true and correct answers for the short term, middle term and long term. We know costs keep rising and are, in fact, staggering. The potential reductions in current levels of care are significant. The numbers of medical care providers are dwindling due to reductions in reimbursement.

I know that the costs of medical care have always and will always be borne by you and me. Either through insurance premiums, government taxes or even plain old cash, we patients are going to pay for whatever care we will get. Yet, interestingly, we don’t seem to be playing much of a role in how our health care dollars are spent. I raise these issues, but I will be the first to admit that I don’t have solutions myself. However, I would like you to think about this, the same way you would buy a television set.

Would you go into a television store and ask the salesman to sell you whatever television set he thinks is a good one? I hope not. I hope you would do some research. First, finding out what the features are that you want, who the quality manufacturers are and what the costs are for the various products.

In order to understand what kind of health care you want, you should do the same thing. If we do nothing, we will continue to be given some type of program by the government. Our job is to learn about the various programs “on the table” and decide how they will affect our family and our very lives. Then we can work to help get the best one. And, you and I may need very different programs, since no two of us are alike. So, there has to be choice among a variety of programs. One size does not fit all.

It’s up to each and every one of us to learn and act. If we don’t we have only ourselves to blame.
Dr. Michael M. Warren is the Ashbel Smith professor of surgery at the University of Texas Medical Branch Division of Urology. Email him at michael.warren@galvnews.com.