Sunday, May 08, 2005
 
The Unasked Question

Because I'm just crass enough, I'll ask this question: Would Helen Harcombe be alive if she lived in a nation with a free market health system?

Michelle Malkin links to the BBC weepy about a woman who died from cancer and left instructions for her husband on how to raise their daughter. However, amid the tissue-sopping prose, we get this glimpse of her health care decisions:
    Mrs Harcombe, who was 28, died shortly after Christmas 2004. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, nine months after finding a lump in her right breast.

    Her family said she had been initially told she was a "low-risk patient" because she was just 26.

    She had undergone a mastectomy, but by last year the cancer spread to her liver and she was told she had six months to live.
Nine months from lump to biopsy, friends. Because "she had been initially told"--by her government health care provider, no doubt--that she was low risk.

In America, we can still get that second opinion and get that damn thing checked out in a week or two. Before it gets the opportunity to gestate into a death sentence. Whether you're a "low risk" patient or not.

Well, most of us have that chance for the second opinion. Until the government ensures that all of us get a chance at its provider's opinion. For The Children. The Children of everyone but the Helen Harcombes.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:16 PM
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