By David Wilkinson
I have rediscovered in the past month an affinity for coughing. I don’t much like it, but I have learned a few things from it.
I’ve been coughing since acquiring a nasty upper respiratory infection a few days before Thanksgiving. It seems I’ve got lots of company, judging by all the hacking going on at churches, airport terminals, restaurants, pharmacies and doctor’s offices.
After four trips to my primary-care doctor and a barrage of antibiotics, breathing treatments, steroids, inhalers and various cough suppressants, I’m now in one of those good news/bad news situations.
X-rays indicate I don’t have pneumonia. I figure it would have to be walking pneumonia since I’ve managed to stay on my feet during all this.
The bad news is that the doctor’s latest guess is that I have had some sort of relapse of allergy-induced asthma that hasn’t been a problem for about 10 years. So next on the docket are appointments with a pulmonologist and an allergist.
Between coughing spells I’ve been doing some thinking.
I have reason to complain, of course. First, as my mother and my wife can attest, I’m not a very patient patient. Second, this coughing episode has triggered a little bit of a personal tempest within the tsunami of the rising cost of health care in America.
In the larger picture, even with health insurance and without surgeries, major injuries or other medical crises, our family’s out-of-pocket medical expenses this year for my care alone will be difficult to swallow. My monthly individual health-insurance premiums paid by my employer, despite higher deductibles and fewer benefits (and a board of directors that has diligently searched for ways to ease the pain) are about two-and-half times greater than they were only two years ago.
Because the cost of family coverage through my health-insurance provider would have more than tripled, my wife, Melanie, was forced to shop for insurance on the open market. Even then, as a healthy 52-year-old, she was denied coverage by several providers and kicked into the Texas “risk pool.” Her premiums are now three times higher than they were just two years ago. And, even as a middle-class American, my situation is hardly unique.
I don’t care what side of the health care and health insurance debate you’re on, the system is clearly broken. From my vantage point, the only thing more unconscionable than the lack of affordable health care for every American citizen today are the callous attitudes and strident voices — especially among Christians — that effectively boil down to “I’ve got mine, thanks be to God, and the rest of you can fend for yourselves.” I just don’t see how that squares with the way of Jesus I read about in the Gospels.
In the grand scheme of things, however, I have no reason to complain. I have good doctors. I have reasonably good health insurance. I have a roof over my head, a warm bed and a heated office. I have a great job and a healthy income. I have access to clean water, nutritious food, powerful medicines, vitamin supplements and a fitness center. All of that puts me in a distinct and privileged minority.
By circumstances of my birth, I have privileges and choices. Any complaints about a chronic cough, especially given all the other circumstances of my life, would fall on deaf ears among the 50 million or so uninsured Americans today. Whatever the categories, the statistics and the sources you’re inclined to cite, the situation is morally inexcusable for a nation of our ideals and resources.
Neither would my nagging cough get much notice among the record 43.6 million people living in poverty in America, including one of every five children, according to latest Census Bureau reports. And I haven’t even touched on the plight of tens of millions of God’s children around the world plagued by poverty, hunger, disease and war.
Maybe these and other reflections prompted by a nagging cough will produce some positive effects. Maybe I will be compelled to write a letter to my congressional representatives to appeal for deliberations about health-care policies and reforms that are more thoughtful, honest and compassionate.
Maybe it will prompt me to increase my gifts to organizations that are ministering to the poor and the hungry and to those that are working for justice for the powerless and the marginalized. Or to lend a hand at a local food bank or similar agency. Or to get to know a few of my poor neighbors who live less than a mile from our house.
The cough won’t last. I pray the reminders that came with it will.