Author David Sedaris shares a personal anecdote about healthcare
David Sedaris (Image by WBUR via Flickr)
This evening, The New Yorker conducted a live chat with author David Sedaris. I thought I’d be a smart ass and send him a wildly inappropriate question about healthcare and the socio-economic divide. You know, the type of question humorists dream of answering.
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one with healthcare on the mind. Another lady submitted a much more thoughtful, articulate question. Since David has spent time in both America and France, she asked him to compare the two countries’ healthcare systems.
As one constantly reads and hears so much about the arcane, bureaucratic language of healthcare reform, oftentimes it takes a personal anecdote to ground the debate again. Sedaris doesn’t strike me as an ideologue, so I wanted to share his personal story as an illustration of how healthcare reform will ultimately result in one of two scenarios. Either Americans will be unable to afford medical care, and they’ll continue to suffer in quiet desperation, or Congress will enact meaningful reform that will grant Americans access to affordable care, and the precious byproduct of human dignity.
Allow me to answer with kidney stones. I had my first one at the age of 34. At the time I was living in New York, and had no health insurance. Never in my life had I experienced such pain, but I couldn’t afford to go to the hospital, and so I passed it at home, not knowing until the end what it actually was. (I thought I was delivering Satan’s baby through my penis.)
I had my second kidney stone seven years later, in Paris. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and after looking at my options in the phone book, I took the metro to a hospital in the 15th. Two minutes after walking through the door, I was in a private room. Delicious, mind-numbing drugs were delivered to my blood stream by way of a tube and life was beautiful. I was in the hospital for four hours, and as I was leaving, I asked the receptionist how I was supposed to pay.
“Oh,” she said, “We’ll send you a statement.”
“But you never even asked me my name.”
“Really?”A few weeks later I got a bill for the equivalent of seventy dollars, this because I’m not a French citizen, and am therefore not entitled to free care.
I got my third kidney stone a few months ago, while on a lecture tour of the United States. The hospital I went to was in Westchester county and the service was outstanding. Maybe I arrived at the slowest time, but, like in France, I was waited on immediately, and the doctor and nurses could not have been more pleasant. Again I was there for four hours, though this time the bill came to $5,800. Not including medicine.
I’m completely fascinated by the health care debate going on in the United States, especially by posters of Obama with a little mustache drawn on his upper lip. Is that what Hitler is really known for, his health care plan? To quote Bill Maher, “I haven’t seen this many pissed off old white people since they canceled, “Murder She Wrote.”
Now I live in England. I’ve just been granted Indefinite Leave To Remain, which allows me access to the NHS.
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Yet another reason to love David Sedaris, right down to his Nazi kidneys and proletariat radio show. He’s the Barney Frank of Paris. But it’s not just pissed off old white people. It’s also pissed off young white people who look old because they can’t afford decent health care.
Oh my God. This should be the title of his next book.
In response to another comment. See in context »I hope he got a steak dinner for that $5,800.
We need these real life examples to prove the GOP is just lying about the healthcare in other countries. I have a lot of friends in Germany and they are completely pleased with their system, same for England and it appears for France too. I have had several employees who were from Canada and they are outraged at how their system is protrayed. They feared getting sick and being bankrupted in the US.
Agreed. I’m currently in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, and the British people I’ve met here are all very confused at FOX’s demonization of the NHS, since they get to experience their health system first hand, and highly value not going bankrupt whenever they get sick and need hospital care.
In response to another comment. See in context »Allison kudos for posting anything from Sedaris, but he need not have suffered passing his stones at home. NYC has a very robust public health care option. Due to two very serious chronic illnesses I was forced out of the private system and now use a NYC funded system. 20 years ago when I had to have my gall bladder removed it was done at Metropolitan Hospital (a city hospital) and what I was charged was based on my income (600 dollars for the surgery and follow up care). NYS has been a right to health care state (only 3 in the nation I believe) for long over 20 years.
Brian – I have the same NYC plan. I wish more states would follow the model. However, I don’t think many people know NY is a right to healthcare state, and if they’re poor, they can essentially get free medical care. I remember a friend of mine told me I could get free healthcare because of my income bracket when I first moved to NYC, but he told me this like it was some fantastic secret only he knew about.
In response to another comment. See in context »We could get health reform very quickly and easily by injecting 50% of the opponents with kidney stones (OK, I haven’t perfected this procedure, but anyway…) and letting them choose a country to live in for the next 2 weeks. The other 50% could just watch.
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