Clinic proof of need for health-care reform

Caller ID indicated that my doctor’s office was phoning.
My heart skipped a beat. Were they calling to tell me I had some horrible, painful, disabling disease?
My panic was allayed by the nurse who explained that they had received my request for a prescription refill from my pharmacy and wanted me to see the doctor for a routine checkup.
My doctor was asking to see me. In fact, he had some openings right away.
Hmm. In the past, I had to wait weeks to get an appointment. And rarely had my doctor’s office called to invite me for a visit.
Things became clearer when I arrived at my primary physician’s office the next day. Rather than walking into a crowded waiting room where I had to wait an interminable period of time to see the doctor, I arrived to find the room empty. I was ushered into an exam room five minutes later. I’d barely cracked open a 2-month-old copy of Time magazine when my doctor walked in.
He apologized for keeping me waiting. I told him he hadn’t kept me. In fact, I’d just become engrossed in an interesting article and he’d disturbed me.
It occurred to me that I was witnessing one of the many consequences of the economic crisis in Tampa Bay. With an 11 percent unemployment rate, residents no longer have access to health insurance, and bustling medical practices are going bust.
By contrast, hospital emergency rooms are inundated with patients who have neglected health concerns, permitting perfectly treatable ailments to turn into life-threatening emergencies.
And free clinics like the Brandon Outreach Clinic in Brandon and the Judeo Christian Health Clinic in Tampa have more patients than they can possibly accommodate.
Drs. Stephen Parks and Pat Jeansonne started the nonprofit Brandon Outreach Clinic 20 years ago to help those people who fall between the cracks – the working poor who don’t make enough money to afford health insurance but make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.
Parks was able to get help for one man with a painful, disfiguring chest tumor. He’d been denied treatment because he had no insurance. In desperation, he sought help at Parks’ clinic. He told Parks he was prepared to excise his own tumor with a razor blade if necessary.
A pregnant woman with no insurance walked into the clinic one evening. However, the nurses quickly discovered she wasn’t pregnant. She had an ovarian cyst the size of an eight-month-old fetus.
Last year, Parks and other volunteer doctors treated 1,735 people. Already this year the clinic is seeing a 30 percent increase in the number of patients needing help.
Last week, politicians got together to kick off a free mobile dental health clinic for children at the Tom Lee Community Health Care Center in Dover to provide dental care to the county’s 141,000 children living below the federal poverty line. Workers at the clinic noted that many children they see, some 13 and 14 years old, have never even had a dental exam.
And, yet, we still have Americans questioning the need for health-care reform. Unbelievable.