Furthermore, from my perspective, I would like to see investment in infrastructure go to universities, hospitals, and pharmacy plans. Highway cloverleaves are fine but I am not sure that they are the best investment, and bridges to nowhere are precisely that. Computers to organize medical records seem a better outlay of taxpayer money than another layer of asphalt on a road that is only slightly rutted. I can take a few bumps on the way to the hospital if I know that anyone who needs expensive medicines will get them.
The wishes of other physicians are no doubt different than mine, and patients will have their own agendas and priorities. If there were ever a Healthcare March on Washington, I would suspect that there would be myriad placards and signs waved aloft by marchers as they trudged their way to the Capitol. The diversity of messages would be dizzying and would testify to the extraordinary needs throughout the healthcare system.
Times are tough and everyone (and I mean everyone) is going to go to Washington wanting change (which means money) to help his or her sector of the economy.
Change We Can Afford
What are the most pressing needs in healthcare where we want change? I know that the sky is not the limit. Deficits are ballooning, billion-dollar bailouts are burgeoning daily, and serious choices have to be made. Any change we want we have to afford. I hope that the American people—patients and providers both—can find common ground to present to Washington a clear message for remaking the healthcare system.
While wrenching decisions remain for the future, it is still good to savor the uplifting spirit of Inauguration Day. In a conference room of my hospital, a big-screen TV was set up to allow staff to watch the inauguration as their work on the wards allowed. The feeling of solidarity was high as doctors, nurses, policemen, and janitors sat together, reverent and transfixed in the flickering glow of the screen.
Other people in the hospital felt drawn to D.C. and had to make personal witness to the inauguration. My secretary, Alice Simmons—an unsung hero who struggles to make our clinic work—journeyed in a large bus caravan that drove through the night on the interstate, passing the Petersburg battlefield on the way through Virginia. This was a reverse Freedom Ride as the buses went from south and north, but there was no fear of attack as in days gone by, just excitement about a great happening.
