Single-Payer: This Time It's Personal

At first I thought the BEFORE picture of the arteries around my heart may have been doctored. There it was big as life...or imminent death—the circumflex artery was 90 to 99 percent blocked. (Hadn't heard "circumflex" since studying classical Greek. It's what we called the mark placed over long vowels; and, sure enough, that artery had the same form as that mark.)

I have not tried it yet, but I'm looking forward now to walking up that big hill from the Metro station without the minor distress. That was the only symptom I had had....and only twice, and both times the distress went away quickly. No pressure on chest, no trouble breathing, no sweating, no dizziness; no numbness in arm or elsewhere. Just some quickly passing discomfort.

Perhaps it's my own medical emergencies over the past year and a half—lymphoma in 2008, and then the almost-out-of-business artery—that have made me more conscious of the scandal that our country does not treat all as "created equal" when it comes to access medical care. And I think this applies in spades to before-it-is-too-late diagnostic testing, without which illnesses like mine would have remained undiagnosed and untreated.

The lymphoma has been in remission for 10 months, and the oncologist—in an atypical burst of guarded optimism—has said it may even be cured! And if I regularly take the five heart-related prescriptions written for me on Tuesday, the stint should continue to do its work unstintingly, the circumflex and less circular arteries should keep the heart working, and I can die from something else!

I'm going to do all I can to promote single-payer health insurance as the only real way to get everyone covered, and urge you to do the same. Our son the doctor heartily agrees with the sizable majority of physicians who believe that single-payer is by far the best solution. We're supposed to care about our brothers and sisters in this great country of ours, right?