Final Word: Helping sick should be health care’s bottom line
Sep 26, 2013, 9:29 PM | Updated: 10:02 pm
At the risk of talking about the Give-A-Thon for PCH hosted Tuesday and Wednesday here on News/Talk 92.3 and Arizona Sports 620, if you listened, you probably thought a little bit about health care.
Sure, we were raising money for Phoenix Children’s Hospital, which is rightfully recognized as one of the great children’s hospitals in the nation.
The money you donated for the PCH Foundation could sure go a long way toward building a new ER and trauma center, continuing the funding for life-safing, cutting edge research, and maintaining the excellent staff of doctors and nurses that make PCH the best in the Southwest.
But with the cost of health care so high that many companies are abandoning their subsidized plans in favor of Obamacare, it’s a good time to remind ourselves that PCH never turns away a child because of the family’s inability to pay.
Not only do we have world-renowned specialists in the fields of pediatric cancer, transplant surgery and endocrinology, and heart issues, but sick kids get care at PCH, no matter what.
Isn’t THAT what we wanted when we first heard about universal health care? It’s certainly what I had in mind.
I didn’t imagine for one minute that businesses would look at Obamacare as an opportunity to NOT offer healthcare to their employees and instead employee people at 29 hours a week and tell them they are on their own.
I also didn’t imagine that federal employees would opt OUT of Obamacare because it wasn’t up to the standards of health care they already have.
I imagined that kids with pre-existing conditions and catastrophic illnesses could get all the treatment doctors could provide, despite the fact that their family might live in poverty.
That’s what I thought.
