Healthcare/Obamacare

I keep telling Alex that in this economy, all I care about is having good healthcare vs a salary- crazy, I know, but with Liam, its what matters. This blog is not meant to be political in any sense but I just read a post on one of my heart mom's boards from a young mother in London. She is in a not so great hospital, with her son who like us, received a postnatal diagnosis for a heart defect and needs surgery. There is a better hospital in the area but because of their healthcare system, very similar to Obamacare's model, she cannot transfer him. In fact, her cardiologist said with the back up they had, it would take a full year for her transfer request to even be considered, in which time, her son would die of heart failure. She is scared that something will happen at their hospital since they do not have the experience as the other one but he needs the surgery and cannot wait.

We were in the same place with hospital experiences and received a lot of push back by not staying local for Liam's surgery, even when he had a tet spell. Our push back and surprise came only from local medical staff interestingly enough. We were actually told we couldn't see a local cardiologist at first- who even misdiagnosed Liam's heart defect.

We didn't choose to stay because our healthcare allowed us to go to the number one hospital in the country for the repair, where 1200+ surgeries took place each year with 30% being the same defect Liam had. Our surgeon Dr. Spray is ranked in the top 3 of the world- in fact, as we arrived, a Saudi royal family was rumored to have been being discharged, after also having Dr. Spray operate on their child. We aren't royal, rich or high up on the political hierarchy, we just have private healthcare, in which we pay for every two week, several hundred dollars a month. Take note unions. In comparison, our local hospital system of INOVA, the same system that did all of my pre natal care and testing, that missed the heart defect and Down Syndrome, could also do the surgery. About 350 surgeries a year, total, among an entire surgical team of all heart defects. Their mortality rate- 3% higher than CHOP. And when 5 in 100 die, 8 in 100, is a lot more. For us, it wasn't a question- we were going to go there, and into bankruptcy if necessary. Not to mention the ICU care after was not 1 on 1 like CHOP, which is what saved Liam's life when a nurse finally listened to me about his breathing issues and he was rushed back to ICU before coding. The post op care was more important in our case than the surgical team was at the end of the day.

My point of this post is to ask you to remember to be thankful for what a great healthcare system we have and I'm proud to help pay for- the political rhetoric in this country is explosive and the truth is not being told. This poor mother has no option with her healthcare- I don't know how to respond to her or to support her when I know what she is fearing. She has no options and that is a tragedy, a child's life should matter more than a system of rules and regulations.