MichaelMoore.com

Feeling Sicko: It's insurance premium day

By James E. Gierach Columnist / Daily Southtown

I'm not feeling well. I think I'm Sicko.

"Sicko," of course, is the name of Michael Moore's new movie about the cost, quality and availability of health care in Cuba, Canada, Great Britain, France and the United States -- a compare and contrast kind of movie where differential diagnosis of what ails our system isn't brain surgery.

But I don't want to say too much and spoil the movie for the poor and huddled masses that settled here.

However, let me say that when I woke up yesterday, I felt fine. I had no temperature, no cough, excreted without pain or pause and had an appetite like a horse. But by midday I suffered an MMC, short for "monthly medical crisis," -- the crisis triggered by the delivery of my monthly Blue Cross/Blue Shield bill and notice of a newly (again) elevated premium that caused me shortness of breath. "Total Premium Due on or before July 17, 2007, $3,212.04," the notice demanded.

Health insurance bills like mine (for three family members bimonthly) should be delivered by ambulance -- not mail truck. But come to think of it, I don't know whether my policy covers ambulance service.

Certainly, I'm pleased to have heath insurance. I know many people don't.

My bill causes extremis tremens partly because I have an individual health care policy rather than a group policy, and because I have had a PEMC -- medical jargon for a "pre-existing medical condition."

Who hasn't? My insurance was cheaper when I smoked cigarettes and ate everything. Now that I don't, and since I completed cardiac rehab Phase II and walk my dogs regularly, I'm a big risk to the insurance types.

I went from type-A to type-pay.

My cholesterol pills cost me $200 a month. When I go to Walgreens or Osco, I always ask for Canadian drugs. But they don't laugh and neither do I.

It's supposed to be the doctor, not the pharmacist, who asks, "Does this hurt?"

Last week a Harvard M.D. wrote that the fee-for-service medical system has to go because the system tempts doctors to become more fee-conscious than patient-conscious.

The Hill-Burton Act (1946) once mandated that hospitals and other medical facilities receiving federal grants and loans to revitalize or build their medical facilities must provide a reasonable amount of medical service to those unable to pay gratis or at reduced cost. That was a start, but in 1997 such program funds dried up.

Today, Stroger Cook County Hospital is in critical health, with care to the sick and needy compromised by a budget crunch and a "Sicko" medical system. An impoverished client of mine who was hit by a Chicago Transit Authority train two years ago was sutured but not X-rayed.

"How can a patient be sent to physical therapy without first getting X-rayed?" I asked an orthopedic physician who treats the poor.

"Welcome to medical care for the poor," he explained.

One-third of surveyed Stroger physicians say they are looking for the exit door.

Meanwhile, my family doctor, who owns two homes each worth over a million bucks, is taking three months off to sail his new 45-foot sailboat up and the down the East Coast.

According to Michael Moore's movie, figuratively speaking, Sen. Hillary Clinton -- although she once piloted U.S. health-care reform -- is on board.

Takes the wind out of my sails.

James E. Gierach is an attorney who lives in Oak Lawn.