If anyone exemplifies our national need for single-payer healthcare it is Dr. Pierrette Mimi Poinsett. I first met Dr. Mimi a few months ago at a coffeehouse in Petaluma, California. It was easy to notice her warm smile. I immediately felt comfortable around her. So, I introduced myself. Her name tag simply said Mimi.
Over the months Mimi and I exchanged pleasantries as she continued to take my orders and serve me pastries. Occasionally, we talked about our lives. She told me she had a son and enjoyed writing. Then, just the other day, Mimi shared with me that she is a Board Certified Pediatrician.
How did an attractive, kind, soft spoken middle aged women with an MD in pediatric medicine end up working part time at a coffeehouse? I had to find out. Well, it turns out her son has, as Dr. Mimi says, "special healthcare needs." Needs that have apparently brought Dr. Mimi to the brink of financial ruin.
Here is a small except from an article, recently written about Dr. Mimi’s plight, on The Wip –The Woman’s International Perspective– by Rose-Anne Clermont, "The irony of Pierrette’s troubles could be seen, from one viewpoint, as tragic: She’s a pediatrician but got lost within the maze of the medical system once her son became ill; she once treated patients from low-income families on Medicaid, yet she eventually became dependent on such services herself; for 13 years, she was a homeowner, but then sold her house to relocate to a county that had better health and educational services for her son; she took a subprime loan, lost the second house and ended up sleeping at her friend’s place; and ultimately, she resorted to seeking pantry services for food."
It is amazing how a woman that has worked so hard all her life to provide for her son, and the community at large, could become so economically devastated by the very medical system she was a part of. While the subprime loan meltdown acted as the final blow in throwing Dr. Mimi and her son effectively out on the street, it was the doctors desperate attempts to give her only child the best medical attention available in the U.S. that created this dilemma in the first place.
A Harvard study done a few years back – often referenced by Obama and Biden – suggests over half of all bankruptcies are the result medical bills. These findings have caused a bit of a stir with the right wing. They point to other studies that break down the filings and come up with a different perspective. The debate usually turns on whether the medical bills and illness caused the bankruptcy or was just a part of the problem. The Annenberg Foundation’s non-partisan fact-checking site factcheck.org compared the differing research to help clear up dispute.
"It’s worth noting, though, that the figure from the Harvard study includes those who lost their jobs or significant income due to illness – even if they didn’t cite mounting health care bills as a direct cause of their bankruptcy. … The study, published in the Feb. 2, 2005, issue of the journal Health Affairs, based its findings on surveys completed by 1,771 Americans in bankruptcy courts in 2001, financial information available in public court records and follow-up interviews with 931 of the respondents. It determined that 46.2 percent of bankruptcies were attributable to a major medical reason. Debtors cited at least one of the following specific causes: illness or injury (28.3 percent of respondents), uncovered medical bills exceeding $1,000 in the past two years (27 percent), loss of at least two weeks of work-related income because of illness (21.3 percent), or mortgaging a home to pay medical bills (2 percent). (A larger category – "any medical bankruptcy" – also covered those who cited addiction, or uncontrolled gambling, childbirth, or the death of a family member. Including that group brought the total percentage of "medical bankruptcies" up to 54.5.) You can read the rest of the webpage here.
Essentially, the issue of the cause of over half, or just under half, of the bankruptcies in the U.S. are related, in one way or another, to medical bills or illness. For Dr. Mimi, she sacrificed her career as a pediatrician in order to take care of her son. Again, quoting from the WIP article we learn how her situation snowballed into bankruptcy;
"Her son, Joshua, was only nine when he was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. In less than three years, he was admitted five times to the hospital after having mental "blow outs," which resulted in him breaking Pierrette’s nose and injuring her wrist. "Meltdowns," she says, "included trying to destroy my bifocals that I need to drive, hitting me and throwing all sorts of stuff around." Joshua also had suicidal thoughts.
"He was admitted to a child unit 65 miles away," Pierrette writes in her blog, "since there are none in my county. (He received) twelve days of stabilization and anger management in milieu of therapy and they added a diagnosis of Tourette’s disorder "he has mega vocal and facial tics without the medication. I was told repeatedly by the staff that Joshua needs residential (in-patient) treatment" ….
With the demands of supporting her son alone, Pierrette lost one contract job after the next, sinking deeper and deeper into financial debt. "Employers aren’t happy when I have to leave work because my son has been suspended or is having a medical crisis."
And there you have it. In just a few years, Dr. Pierrette Mimi Poinsett, a successful middle-aged single mother, who worked hard all her life, lost nearly all her wealth due to her son’s illness and found herself sleeping on friends couches and waiting in food lines at the local shelter. All because her child developed, "special healthcare needs." The fact is, as a parent, Dr. Mimi has been doing everything she can to care for her only child. And, as a result, has sacrificed greatly.
Dr. Mimi is now financially impoverished and her son Joshua is finally receiving therapeutic behavioral services at home, therapy and case management through Sonoma county. Yet she provides his primary care. She also now works part time at the coffee house, because it offers part time employees flexible hours and healthcare benefits.
According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. ranks 37th in the world for healthcare and has the most expensive system in the world. In fact, in the U.S., if you or a loved one gets sick, we are the only nation in the industrial world that has a healthcare system that can bankrupt you. Even if you have healthcare insurance when first diagnosed, it does not guarantee your insurance agency will stick with you.
We all know insurance companies look for ways not to provide coverage. That is their business. And, once you have lost your job due to an illness, heaven help you. In the U.S., under a purely capitalist healthcare system, all your assets can be cleaned out before you become even eligible to the meager and often inaccessible socialized healthcare our state and national government currently provides. There are 36 other nations, with some sort of nationalized healthcare system that are doing a better job at providing care for all their citizens. And all of them, cost less than ours.
Until we do away with the health insurance industry and adopt a single-payer (socialized) healthcare system, we will continue to see folks like Dr. Mimi serving cups of coffee and fresh pastries. All the while, not attending to sick children during a flu outbreak.
Dr. Mimi tells me that as a result of the limited work available, she has been unable to find a job at any of the local clinics. However, she seems always optimistic and confident her situation will soon improve. She tells me in an email, "My plans are to transition out of traditional clinical medicine and focus on health advocacy writing as well as forming a support network for parents with children with special mental health and physical health needs." In the mean time, it’s nice to see at least the local coffeehouse is flexible with her hours and willing to provide her with some basic health insurance.
Dean Walker
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