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From the Publisher’s Desk
US medicine is the best
by Dr. Dev Anuroop Brar, MD
Recently, my daughter injured, rather re-injured, her thumb while playing lacrosse in England. She was taken to the doctor who looked at it, felt it, and put on a splint bandage. I talked to her and her house (dormitory) mistress who told me that my daughter would see a surgeon on Monday. The injury occurred on Tuesday. When I asked why the appointment was not scheduled sooner, she told me that Monday was the first day the physician was available for an emergency. Not understanding all this and feeling my daughter’s pain and distress as her father, I hopped on a plane and met the housemistress and my daughter five minutes before her appointment with the surgeon. I reassured my daughter that as a physician myself I believed I could get things done a little better and quicker.
To my surprise, this day was the first time my daughter’s hand and thumb had been x-rayed. The x-ray showed nothing visible so the doctor decided to put the splint bandage back on. I sat with a very nice nurse who put the bandage on, asking my fifteen-year old daughter what color she would like. I asked the nurse the same question I had asked the doctor. “Why are we not doing an MRI?” I believed that her injury was due to soft tissue damage because it was a re-injury and had been repaired before. The nurse told me that the doctor was working on setting an appointment with the orthopedic specialist, which confused me because we were sitting in the orthopedic and trauma center. I asked the nurse if we could see him/her that day. She was very nice and asked us to wait while she went to check. We waited two hours for the nurse to return. She told us the doctors were going to do an ultrasound, yes ultrasound of the thumb and surrounding area. When I asked why an ultrasound, I was told that the specialist was not available until Tuesday, and he was the only person who could order an MRI. My daughter was injured on Tuesday so we were left in the lurch for a week, not knowing what was wrong with her and all the while, she was in severe pain.
To prepare for the ultra sound, the nurse had to cut off the plaster of Paris splint bandage that had just been applied…again causing my daughter much pain because of the extra manipulation. Nothing came of the ultrasound. I left on Monday morning after being reassured by the housemistress that there was no point in my staying because there was not a time set with the orthopedist even for her scheduled appointment on Tuesday. My daughter did see the doctor finally and he ran an MRI, however not finding anything extra ordinary he put the plaster back on and told her to have it removed in four weeks. She was still in a lot of pain.
My daughter arrived in the states for fall break on Friday, October 17. We set an appointment with a hand surgeon on Wednesday, October 22. Dr. Jeffery Greenberg did every related test and within two hours told us he would have to open her thumb to see what was wrong, but he was ninety percent sure that he would be able to correct the problem. She underwent surgery on October 26. She suffered through the normal postoperative pain and post anesthetic fatigue, but her hand is already feeling better. Her cast comes off on November 12, and we feel she has received the right treatment. The rest is not in our hands.
Those who want insurance for all, as it exists in Europe and in Canada need to know that a vast amount of revenue for hospitals in the US comes from citizens of other countries. Therefore, why would we want socialized medicine or socialized anything? We have proven that our medical delivery system is the best in the world and so is our capitalist system.
Lately, throughout this election year, we have had people and politicians talk about universal health insurance. We hear about how good the insurance is in Europe and Canada. We also hear that it is the government’s responsibility to provide health insurance.
As I and millions of citizens in Europe and Canada have experienced…socialized medicine does not work. We should be extremely proud of the delivery of health care in our country. Thousands if not millions of people come for treatment in the US from the very countries that we hear some of our people wanting to emulate.
Socialized medicine is bad and so is socialized government. We introduced the concept of capitalism and that led to the introduction of American medicine. We should be proud of our system of medicine and more importantly our system of government. In this tumultuous year, one thing stands clear…we are the best country in the world—period! Furthermore, we should be very proud of it!
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