OPINION: The eyes have it

Happily, the head of medical care for Pan Am was an international-medicine specialist, and he referred me to an expert in Middle Eastern funguses. (I know, I know: ‘fungi,’ but who ever says that?) This expert knew what to do for me. It involved chemotherapy, and I had to give up flying, but he made me well.

Now I look back wistfully at the ease with which I was whisked to precisely the right doctor for what was a rather obscure malady. I’ve been dealing with some kind of problem with my eyes for four months now, and have been treated for a bacterial infection, for blepharitis, and for ocular rosacea. But here I still am, walking around looking like a sad and sleepy rabbit: red-eyed, with droopy eyelids and, often, tears inexplicably coursing down my cheeks. One doctor suggested that I might have an arthritis-related syndrome, but I’m afraid to look it up online and see what it is. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty suggestible. I’ve learned not to read the list of possible side-effects that comes with each prescription, because to read them is to get them!

So I’m not reading up on chronic autoimmune conditions I might just possibly have, thank you very much. No, I’m looking for another expert, and trying very hard not to think that I’d be having far better luck if I were 22 instead of 68 and on Medicare. It’s hard to avoid that thought, though, when one ophthalmologist says, “I don’t know whether you have something funny going on with your eyes, or whether you just have funny eyes,” and the other schedules a follow-up visit for May!

One reason America’s medical costs are twice as high as any other country’s is that instead of seriously considering a national health service (which was desired by Dwight Eisenhower, and proposed by Richard Nixon), we allowed the physicians’ union and lobbying organization known as the American Medical Association to usher most of the country’s doctors into what might be called the privileged classes – and then, by refusing to legislate tort reform, we forced them to buy very expensive malpractice insurance. (Talk about whiplash!)

Now, they emerge from medical school with horrendous debts, have a heck of a time getting started, and feel they deserve whatever they can earn once they get past all that -- which is hard to argue with, given the challenges of medical practice. But no one is really benefitting from this system, including our physicians. And now Medicare is being impoverished just as the baby-boom population bulge enters the system like an alligator being swallowed by a python.

There are always doctors out there who simply want to heal us, thank God, but they may be harder to find in years to come, unless we make some changes that will benefit everyone. Skilled and dedicated legislators could do this, but does anybody think Congress is still capable of it? Hello?? Anybody?

Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.