A doctor’s take on universal health care

My father was a primary care physician, and when Medicare was first proposed more than 40 years ago, he was dead-set against it. He was not only against it, he and my mother were what today would be called “activists.” For months the dining room table was littered with materials for the letter-writing campaign. They were clear that they did not want “socialized medicine.”

My father usually voted Republican. He voted for Ronald Reagan. He voted for John McCain. He even voted for Jesse Helms.

So why did he eventually enthusiastically support Medicare? And why did he support universal health care in the United States? And why, although he voted for McCain, did he say shortly before his death last Thanksgiving that he was glad Obama won and thought he would do a good job? What happened?

My father was born in High Point, N.C., and spent his entire life there except for his college, medical school and military years. High Point was a manufacturing town. People worked in furniture factories and textile mills. For nearly four decades, my father saw many of those people through their illnesses. When he began practice, he made house calls. He knew his patients, knew who their children were and where they lived. He knew what their lives were like and how difficult it was for many of them to pay their bills.

Once, I remember a man came in and told my father he would get the bill paid he had run up during an extended illness. He said he had taken a second job to get the money. My father told him, “Nobody takes a second job to pay me,” and tore up the bill.

My father had a sister whose only child had a genetic disorder that left her severely mentally retarded. He told me that, at one time, the medication she was on to prevent seizures cost one-third of the family’s income.

Jack Hunt knew what illness did to people and their families. He did not think the people he served could afford medical care without the government playing a role. He did not believe people should go broke because they got sick. He was for Medicare and for systems like the Canadian and the French. He once went to New Zealand on a vacation. He barged into a hospital unannounced to talk with doctors and nurses face-to-face to find out what they really thought of their health care system. They were very happy with it. Everywhere he went he talked to ordinary people. He talked to taxi drivers and people in restaurants. “A working man’s paradise” was their assessment of universal health care.

What he wanted for his patients was the shot at a decent life without fear of financial ruin. He knew they would never be rich. He knew they had to be careful with their money, but he saw dignity in their lives and was ever alert for ways in which people tried to take advantage of them. He was deeply suspicious of insurance and drug companies. (But he tended to harass people he thought were not doing their part to take care of themselves.) He thought billing for procedures led to running up bills by doing a lot of procedures that were not needed. He knew the pitfalls of fee-for-service medicine. (His favorite joke was, “There is no such thing as unnecessary surgery. Either the patient needs it or the surgeon needs it.”)

Had you asked him about government debt, he would have been as skeptical as any Republican, but that did not deter him from supporting universal health care. He would have favored cutting out a lot of “the damn paperwork.” He thought his patients were at the bottom of the heap with hospitals, doctors and drug and insurance companies taking care of themselves. He thought his people deserved better.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a Mary Baldwin College chaplain.