Don't Kill People

Tragedy and the American healthcare system

An EMT was trying to insert a needle into my arm while I wept and bled in the back of a speeding ambulance, five months pregnant with my youngest son.

“I can’t lose the baby,” I told him matter-of-factly.

He said two things to me that I will remember for the rest of my life:

“We’re taking you to the nearest hospital.” And later: “What insurance do you have?”

He looked at my husband who was texting our neighbors Mark and Nara to see if one of them could sit in the house to be with our sleeping older child. “Nearest hospital,” he said without hesitation, and without so much as acknowledging the question.

The amount of blood suggested the baby and I were in mortal danger. We knew what was about to happen would be terrifying. We also knew it was going to be expensive.

The baby was saved. And, as this writing suggests, so was I.

The bill for all of it was just over $10,000.

Let me clearly state: Nobody should shoot people on the street. Hopefully we agree that killing, for all people, is a definite wrong.

My hope was that today, in the aftermath of the United Healthcare CEO’s assassination, all healthcare CEOs who make $10 million a year would consider the human scope of what the private health insurance industry does to millions upon millions of American families facing the worst moments of their lives. As they scramble for private security details and comfort each other on the phone, my hope was that they consider for a fleeting moment how an act of desperate vengeance could have happened to someone like them.

Instead, today Anthem Blue Cross announced that they would start instituting time limits on anesthesia during surgery.

A few crucial months after the ambulance ride, as I lay delivering my son by emergency C-section, a complication that caused all the earlier bleeding made the normally swift procedure last an additional two hours. I can already imagine the psychological agony of an awake hysterectomy, because I had one that day with just an epidural to numb me, but I cannot imagine the compounded physical agony of an unmedicated operation.

The shell casings recovered at the murder scene reportedly said “deny,” and “defend,” and “depose,” clear references to methods insurance companies use to reject coverage.

I remember the word “DENIED” printed neatly in red next to the itemized list of hospital bills related to saving my son: The out-of-network county hospital where a nurse with Moana-themed scrubs stroked my head as she administered medication to stop contractions. The medical transport the next morning my doctor ordered so we could get to a hospital where he could examine me and the baby — when we hit a speed bump, the EMT threw her body over me so I didn’t jostle too much on the gurney.

The private insurance industry forces millions of Americans to chose between debt or death. Often, ghoulishly, the outcome is both.

If I were worried about an ambulance out of coverage, I would have waited at home or waited in traffic for an hour to cross Los Angeles to get to my doctor’s office and sat in the waiting room bleeding out and perhaps would not be here to write this, and neither would my son.

I am extremely lucky. I called 911 and we lived. My baby is now a two-year-old sweetiepie who is currently at preschool where he kisses his best friend on the cheek at pickup and says, “Love you tomorrow.” Yesterday at his pediatrician’s appointment, he muttered “Ouch!” under his breath during his flu shot then looked at the doctor and said, brightly, “It’s ok I ok!” She gasped and put her hand over her heart. When he looks at me, he smiles so big his eyes often fill with tears. He says “Hi friend!” to every dog. Before I lower him into his crib at night, I smell his hair and kiss his pudding cheek and remember holding my stomach in the ambulance, knowing I would do anything to save him.

And, thank G-d when that hospital bill came, I had just written a children’s book. The advance had come in from the publisher, and it covered the bill. I cried as I paid it.

I, of course, tried to fight it. But the mental ordeal of re-living the night on the phone with my insurance provider so soon after it happened — still pregnant — was nightmarish. I would detail the dark blood on the floor, then the bright red flood, the frantic calls to my covering OB, the motionlessness of my son inside me, the call to 911, the shriek as I bled into the mattress in the ambulance, the night awake in the hospital, the vulnerability of getting lifted for transport. I would hang up and vomit.

Nobody should kill. Nobody should face a horrific death for no reason. Nobody’s family should be making sudden funeral arrangements for someone who should be alive.

And may any politician reading any of the thousands of comments under any news article about yesterday’s murder realize that there is a massive public outcry for comprehensive universal healthcare. There is a furious electorate more powerful than the lobbyists for the private healthcare industry. There has never been a time more morally and politically expedient for the next generation of progressive lawmakers to come out with a fully articulated plan for guaranteed healthcare for all Americans, regardless of their financial standing.

Because as of this writing, aside from the countless customers who are routinely denied coverage for lifesaving medications and procedures, there are 27 million uninsured people in this country.

So may the lawmakers who want to earn an immediate wellspring of constituent support come out strong for what is so clearly right.

Because nobody should feel backed against a wall, bleeding out, begging for mercy that they know won’t come.