I’ve been running a poll on my About.com patient empowerment site, asking the question Tom Brokaw asked in the debate this week:  Is healthcare a right?  or a responsibility?

Do we as individuals believe we should all have a right to healthcare coverage, similar to the way we have police protection, or fire protection, or education, or even library books?

Or should healthcare be looked at more as an individual responsibility, one we must pay for ourselves, such as food or shelter?

You still have time to vote if you wish — right here.

But the next question has now popped up:  are we so frustrated by trying to understand where the economy is going, how it tanked, and what the bailout means that we will now rest our voting decisions on healthcare reform?

Come on over to about.com and let us know what you think!

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The incredible anger of all Americans at those greedy S.O.B.s who have been running the banks and investment houses that are already robbing Americans of their hard earned money, will ramp up further at this revelation:

As you may know, the number of uninsured Americans is typically quoted at 47 million. We learned that last year those numbers were reduced to 45.7 million– not because more Americans can now afford insurance; rather, because their income had declined to levels that made them eligible for state healthcare assistance programs.

But in thinking that through, I realized there is a ripple effect, too. With the tanking of the economy comes layoffs, and with layoffs come even more people whose income will decline and, of course, that means they may not be able to access healthcare. Not all will become eligible for care through the government. In many cases, they will simply be left off the healthcare roles — no more coverage for them will mean no healthcare at all. Not for them. Not for their children either.

Which then led to another thought. The Commonwealth Fund reported in January that 101,000 people died last year from problems that would have been prevented if the person who died had health insurance. Do the math. 101,000 deaths. 45.7 million uninsured. That’s 22 uninsured people who died for each million who didn’t have insurance.

Now let’s look at what’s beginning to take place as a result of those greedy Wall Street CEOs who have caused our economy to decline, and who will be responsible for millions more job losses. For each million people who lose their health insurance because they’ve lost their jobs, 22 will die.

In my not-so-humble opinion — that’s blood on the hands of those Wall Street criminals and robber barons who have reaped millions of dollars for themselves, while denying the rest of the world its stability. This isn’t about people jumping off buildings and bridges because they’ve lost their savings. This is about people — responsible and hardworking Americans — who will no longer be able to pay for the care they need, have earned, and deserve.

Maybe those very guilty CEOs can’t be arrested for bad business dealings. But certainly they should pay for the deaths they will cause?  And what about the families left with no one to support them because their loved one has died?

These dominoes are huge and destructive.

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From time to time I’ll read an article written by a doctor about his or her experience as a patient.  Several have written books about their experiences, and what they learned from them.

Often their own patient-hood causes some sort of epiphany.  That “aha!” moment that helps them GET IT.  Their work is no longer their job, or their career.  It becomes a total understanding of how their patients feel, how they are fearful, confused, frustrated and anxious. It creates empathy.

This came to mind today because I found two articles that address the subject.  The first was published in Healthy, edited by Amber Smith of the Syracuse Post Standard (the newspaper that carries my biweekly column) — called Doctors As Patients, it tells the stories of five doctors who had their own experiences as patients and all of whom feel much better prepared to do their work now.

The second was an article about Dr. Ron Davis, president of the AMA (American Medical Association) and his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.  I’ve blogged about his article on my About.com site.

Regardless of their experiences, most doctors will still never “purely” understand the feelings of inadequacy each patient feels when it comes to understanding his or her medical problem.  No doctor can ever subtract his or her knowledge.  Further, when a doctor goes into treatment, there is still a professional courtesy that goes along with it.  Regardless of what form all that takes, the experience is still different.

But if I had my choice?  I’d most certainly choose a doctor who’s been in that very vulnerable position of having been a patient himself or herself.  That doctor will most definitely be more empathetic. It’s a perspective that will serve him or her well in practice, for sure.

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When I received my cancer diagnosis in 2004, and proved I didn’t really have cancer at all, it was the first time I had ever heard or known about that form of misdiagnosis.

It’s backwards from those we hear about more frequently.  Most of the time we hear about a “missed diagnosis” — meaning someone has a disease or condition and it is not diagnosed — and then does not get treated.  In the case of a cancer, of course, no treatment may mean the difference between life and death.

This summer we were able to prove that two other people, Heather and Daniel, had been diagnosed with cancers they did not have, almost identical to my own misdiagnosis.  In our cases, we were told we had something we didn’t.  Missed — yes — but backwards from the more usual case described above.

And it seems another person has suffered this fate as well — as written about in today’s Post-Tribune (from northwest Indiana — not far from Chicago) — a gentleman named Albert Velasquez Jr. was diagnosed in 2003 with lung cancer.  He did exactly what he was supposed to do — went for a second opinion — and the second lab also told him he had lung cancer….

Except that he didn’t have it.

As near as I can tell, he never received treatment for it either.  About three months passed between his first tests and the ultimate discovery of his misdiagnosis…. and if you substitute his name and type of cancer for mine, we could be telling the same story, except for two distinct points:

1.  That his misdiagnosis was a result of switching lab specimens. This happens WAY too frequently.  Lab techs are in a big hurry and swap one person’s samples and name with another.  I suppose they catch themselves when something like this happens (or if a woman is told she has prostate cancer?) — but studies tell us it happens daily.  About 1% of them lead to dangerous treatment mistakes, according to a pathologist at the University of Pittsburgh. But he also pointed out that “you wouldn’t want to have 1% of airplanes crashing.”

2.  Albert Velasquez has filed a lawsuit. I did not.

His suit is asking for damages to cover the extra costs needed from the misdiagnosis, and proof that the right person was eventually informed of his misdiagnosis.

So what can we patients do with this information?

I hope it will show you that when mistakes are made, it becomes incumbent upon us — the patients who pay for the mistakes — to figure out the real truth.  We need to trust our intuition, pull out all the stops, and keep following the evidence to prove — or disprove — our diagnosis.

Here are some tools:

1. Learn about the concept of differential diagnosis — and keep asking questions.
2. Make sure you get at least one second opinion (even a third, if necessary, just like Mr. Velasquez did).

If you have been diagnosed with cancer, then yes, there is a better chance you do have it than don’t.  But why on earth would you risk those horribly invasive treatments like chemotherapy or radiation if, for want of another test or opinion, you don’t have it?

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