On Friday, I caught Chris Rock on Bill Maher’s show. And he had a message for all the Tea Partiers out there: If you only knew.
The two comedians were discussing health care, when Rock recalled visiting the hospital with his dad back in the day, and then more recently with his mom. At 22, Rock said, he was broke and not in a position to financially help his sick father. Consequently, his dad went to a third-rate hospital for a ruptured ulcer and died days later.
Fast-forward almost two decades, and a much richer Rock stops by to see his mom only to wonder if he stumbled upon a hotel rather than a hospital. There was a “concierge in the lobby,” Rock quipped, before noting “if the average person knew the discrepancies in health care, there would be riots in the street.”
He ain’t lying. When you get a taste of what good health insurance can get you, you realize how much of an advantage the have-mores actually have.
For the last two years, I’ve been being treated at one of the best cancer centers in the country, and I’m still shocked at the level of care. Like Chris Rock said, it’s like getting an upgrade to first class.
Last week, for example, I had an appointment with my chemotherapist. We talked about the results from my latest blood test, which had spiked in recent weeks but then subsided. I told her it was likely caused by stress, and she suggested that I talk to a shrink.
“This can be a lot to deal with,” she said. Maybe she was right, I thought. So I agreed to talk to a therapist on the spot.
An hour later, I’m getting my juice in the chemo suite when the phone rings. And guess who’s on the other end? That’s right, the therapist’s office.
In the 60 or so minutes that it took for me to see my doctor and then wait for my meds to get mixed in the pharmacy, my doctor told her assistant to contact the therapist’s assistant, who contact me. And there I was on the phone, with calendar in hand, coordinating schedules.
The kind voice on the other end told me that my doctor was worried about me and that she wanted me to talk to someone who could help. Talk about thorough. I felt like I was in that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and crew are getting pampered before going to see the Wizard. Remember all the dedicated attendants? Several were curling the Lion’s hair, while others were combing Toto’s fur. And still others were buffing the Tin Man’s armor? It was like an assembly line of excellent service.
That’s what the right coverage can offer: a close network of people providing first-rate care. It sure is a beautiful thing.
Unfortunately, though, so many middle- and working-class Americans will never know what that’s like. If they could just get a taste, it would change they way they view health care forever.
And this access, or lack of, is what’s so perplexing about the Tea Partiers. Many of them are among the 38 million uninsured and underinsured in this country, but they are the most anti-health-care-reform people around.
And all they have to do is look inward to see the health care contradiction at its most absurd. The lawmakers that the Tea Partiers support have the kind of insurance that gives them access to top-tier treatment centers like mine. The voters who got them elected, however, don’t fare so well.
For the life of me, I can’t comprehend their reasoning or their anger. They were rioting in the streets all right. Only they didn’t know they were mad about the wrong damn thing.
