Mid-morning, an azure-skied warm Friday in late August, and I was squirming, sitting, then hopping off, then back on, then off a hospital emergency room examination table. I was waiting to be seen by a physician. The triage nurse had taken my vitals. Blood had been drawn and ostensibly sent to a lab. An hour had passed since I’d signed myself in at the desk.

Everything began heading south earlier that morning when I began feeling seriously unwell. Eventually the point came when I, a 22 year business for self independent contractor with a flimsy major medical policy, had to face the fact that something serious seemed in the offing, and that I better do something about it.

Back to the ER venue: Repeated treks to the head nurse, to learn where a doctor might be, and when I’d be seen, were met with chastising replies that I would have to return to the examination room. Eventually I advised the stern lady that I was signing myself out, and that I would relieve the hospital of all liability. At that a doctor did at last appear. With the discharge he wrote that “If pain continue [sic], see regular doctor on Monday.”

By later that afternoon, things had gone down hill such that I had no choice but to try another hospital. Forty-five minutes after registering at the ER station I was in the OR with an anesthesia drip in my arm. My appendix had burst. (If I had adhered to the first physician’s advice, “see regular doctor on Monday,” I’d have been dead, or very near death, by that midnight. But that’s not the point. I digress.)

Burst appendix can be nasty. I was in ICU for several days, then in a regular room for several more. The wound must be kept open and irrigated frequently lest any trace of bacteria lodge somewhere in the cavity and begin the rejuvenation of toxic sepsis. Following discharge, for more than a month I had to return as an outpatient to have the wound reopened, irrigated, then the edges cauterized. Even if I had been an employee, as differentiated from working for my self, few employers will continue to pay much for the six months I was unable to work. The major medical paid most of the hospital bills and physician fees, but I was still left with thousands in deductibles and co-pays, and the costs of living that don’t go on hiatus simply because one is unable to work.

All this stipulated to, I was lucky! And here’s the point: Yesterday, in a House Committee Hearing on Veterans Affairs, it was disclosed that there are 1.8 million (1,800,000) veterans with zero health coverage! What I experienced had nothing whatsoever to do with lifestyle. Smoking or not smoking, alcoholic or abstainer, sedentary or athlete . . . Nothing I could have done would have kept me from the gurney. Of course, the burst appendix could just as easily have been something equally as unpredictable and catastrophic, and every American regardless of service status or political or social affiliation or vocation is subject to the physical trauma, and most are teetering along a financial tightrope.

The healthcare delivery system in the United States of America is one of the very worst on the planet. With 31¢of every health insurance premium buying nothing but administrative overhead, the vast preponderance of that to pay for underwriting and claims clerks whose job it is to deny coverage whenever possible, we pay way beyond what anyone else on the globe pays. And our morbidity results — incidence of illness, life expectancy rates, infant mortality, etc. — are among the poorest on the planet.

As utterly shameful as that may be, perhaps the most shameful case of all was revealed in yesterday’s hearing concerning those nearly two million who laid their lives and limbs and psychological health on the line for each and every one of us have no healthcare access whatsoever.

All of the prayers and yellow-ribbon decals in the world do nothing at all for the veteran who falls ill. Nor do I think that those who do give much of a damn for prayers and ribbons. If that’s the best you can do, you can shove both where the sun don’t shine. Rather, they want and need healthcare! Of any Americans, they deserve it. And we’ve a moral obligation that cannot be mitigated to see that they get it.

The Bush/Cheney regime and “conservative” Republicans have no qualms providing nearly $8 billion in subsidies to the oil industry, cutting the taxes for the wealthiest of the wealthiest of “haves and have mores” wealthy Bush Rangers, attempting to provide a windfall tax break for ³/₁₀s of 1% of the most fortunate of all Americans via elimination of the estate tax, the most extraordinary subsidization of the health insurance and private hospital and pharmacology industries, but for America’s vets . . . .  

For six years this administration of cowards — except for Colin Powel, who is no longer a part of the administration, not another member of the top echelon did military duty, most taking extreme measures to avoid it — has lied concerning the basic needs of those it readily sent to face mutilation and death, and has proposed budgets that skimped and cut care for those who faced the perils. It is long overdue when we need to proclaim loud and clear that the first thing the administration and congress must do now is to cut the crap. Providing a hand up for Bill Gates and the $25 billion net worth 5-member Walton family and billionaire hedge fund managers et al while dissing vets and their families . . . .  They must think we’re all a bunch of suckers. It’s enough to make you sick. Just don’t you dare, however if you’re one of the 1.8 million vets identified in yesterday’s House hearing.

—  Ed Tubbs