Opinion - Columns - Phil Dirkx

Published: Friday, Aug. 14, 2009

Phil Dirkx: A family tradition of single payers

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This week our county Health Commission endorsed the single-payer health insurance proposal. “Single-payer” is a less-controversial name for government health insurance.

I’m not against government health insurance. I have government health insurance — Medicare — and I like it.

Let me qualify that by saying I like the first two parts of Medicare, but not the prescription-drug part.

The first two parts cover hospital and medical care. For those parts, the government is the payer. But for the drug part, various private insurance companies are the payers. And if you buy more than $2,700 worth of prescriptions a year, the insurance company stops paying you, but you still have to pay them.

Now I want to get back to single payers. My grandfather Dirkx was a single payer. He married my grandmother in 1885 and they had nine children. If they needed medical treatment, he was the single payer, out of what he made as a gardener. True, medical care wasn’t as costly then, or as effective. Three of their children died, probably from diphtheria.

My grandfather McGinnis was also a single payer, out of his wages as a steam boiler fireman. Two of his children died too.

My mother was also a single payer. After she and her first husband separated, she was the payer. Their daughter, my sister Mary, was born with clubfeet. Her doctor wasn’t costly, nor was he aware of the successful treatment then available for clubfeet.

My mother eventually found a competent doctor, but it was too late to completely correct Mary’s feet, although she underwent several surgeries.

Mother married my father in 1928 and he became the single payer. Their first baby never left the hospital. He died in a month from a congenital defect that doctors can now correct.

I was five in 1935 when a car hit me. I spent a month in the hospital with a fractured skull and a broken leg that required a bone graft.

Today the total cost of my treatment seems laughably low — about $700. The anesthesiologist, for example, charged $15. But during the Depression almost no workingman had $700. Fortunately the driver’s car insurance paid us a settlement.

Today’s medical and hospital bills are much farther out of reach for the average person. Dependable insurance is essential. Yes, the government can be inefficient, but so can corporations. For example, AIG, the huge insurance company, recently needed more than $150 billion in government bailout money because of its mismanagement. At least we get to vote on who runs the government.

Contact Phil Dirkx at phild2008@sbcglobal.net or 238-2372.