Why is the passage of health care reform a victory for Americans?
One woman’s name sums up the reason: Nikki White.
Nikki White’s story is told in one of the best books going about the subject of fairness and fiscal realism in health care: T.R. Reid’s The Healing of America. Traveling the world in search of help for a disabling shoulder injury incurred during service in the Navy, Reid, a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, learned about the strengths and weaknesses of health care systems from Europe to Asia. Those global comparisons enrich his discussion of the American system and the urgency of reform.
As Reid wrote, “If Nikki White had been a resident of any other rich country, she would be alive today.” White—ironically, the daughter of two middle managers for a pharmaceutical firm—died at 32 of lupus, though today 80 percent of people with lupus live lives of normal length.
It’s widely reported that some 20,000 Americans die each year of treatable ailments; White’s story is particularly moving because she died so young, and because she benefited from certain features of our system, but lost her fight in the end because of the gaps we tolerated. Tolerated, that is, until last Sunday night, when reform passed by a House vote of 219-212.
Not long before being diagnosed with lupus, White, who had a degree in psychology, got a hospital job that gave her medical insurance. But when her symptoms intensified, she lost the job and the insurance. She applied to every carrier she could find, but none would accept a client with lupus.
She went home to Tennessee and got TennCare for a while, but funding for that program was cut back in 2005 and she was excluded. Social Security denied her disability benefits.
According to Reid, late in 2005, White had a seizure and was hospitalized. As President Bush (43) used to say, Americans can get treatment; they can go to the emergency room. White did get treatment: during that winter she had 25 operations at no cost to her. But in the spring, she died.
Twenty-five free operations too late: that’s not only heartbreaking, it’s a waste of money. That’s what reform supporters mean when they say overhauling the system could bring big savings, possibly reducing the country’s deficit by $130 billion.
Why have doctors overwhelmingly favored health care reform? Reid quotes White’s physician, Dr. Amlyn Crawford: “Nikki didn’t die from lupus. Nikki died from complications of the failing American health care system.”
Now there’s hope that Crawford and other doctors across the country won’t lose so many patients from those complications. Within 90 days of enactment of the new law, people denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions will have access to coverage from a high-risk pool.
(Also, six months after the bill is enacted, the reprehensible practice of rescinding policyholders’ coverage when they get sick will be illegal. And—correcting a condition that has shackled some parents to unsatisfactory, underpaid jobs because other jobs don’t offer coverage for sick children—insurers will be barred from excluding children with pre-existing conditions.)
In the past, Reid points out, the American health system has gotten high rankings from the World Health Organization for offering prompt treatment and free choice of doctors and hospitals. But in the matter of “equal distribution of health care,” the U.S. was ranked thirty-second in the world. Now the country has a chance to bring that reality into line with its ideals and end the type of tragedy exemplified by the death of Nikki White.
