Face It: Hospitals Are For Sinners
By all accounts, Mickey Mantle was one hell of a baseball player. By all accounts, he also was one heck of a hell-raiser.
Both aspects of Mantle’s life intersected last week in a Dallas operating room as he received a liver transplant to repair the one he had helped destroy through decades of alcohol abuse.
Even before Mantle had gotten out of the operating room, questions were being raised about the ethics of his surgery. Primary among them was the opinion that a jerk who wrecks his body does not deserve a liver transplant.
Excluding sinners from medical care would greatly reduce medical costs - no doubt about it. No one would be in the hospital, except a few newborn babies and some elderly people who formerly dwelled in monasteries.
If Mickey Mantle does not deserve a liver because he spent many years as a drunk, does actor Christopher Reeve deserve care for his spinal-cord injury, which he brought on himself by his chosen hobby of riding a horse?
And after we’re done condemning Mantle and Reeve for their sins, should we then evict from the hospital everyone who is there because he or she smoked, drank, took drugs, had sex without protection, drove a car too fast, did not wear a helmet or seat belt, had an accident while hunting, slipped getting into a hot tub, lopped off a body part operating a combine or snow blower or lawn mower, overate, attempted suicide, worked in a high-stress job or got hurt playing high school, college or pro sports?
Let’s face it: Hospitals are for sinners, and there are plenty of us.
More curious is the short time elapsed between the time Mantle was listed as needing a liver transplant and the actual surgery. That turn of events left the nation dumbstruck.
Is it possible, experts and pundits inquired, that someone who is famous, wealthy or both could have access to lifesaving medical resources that other less-blessed citizens might not enjoy?
One must presume that the people who were asking that question slept peacefully through the last two years of debate about reforming the nation’s flawed health care system.
Did it help to be Mickey Mantle to get a transplant? Well, how many other 63-year-old men with cirrhosis of the liver, hepatitis, liver cancer and relatively little money have received liver transplants in recent years? A generous estimate could include zero in its range and not be too far off.
The transplant community, upon hearing doubts that the system plays fair, harrumphed and protested in solemn tones that in the distribution of vital inner parts obtained from the newly deceased, equity and justice are the only thoughts that flit through medical minds.
To some extent that is true. Once on a waiting list, the criteria used to decide who gets the next available liver are almost exclusively biological. Once on the waiting list, Mickey Mantle did not have to push anyone else out of the operating room to get his liver.
But the sole reason he was on the waiting list in the first place is that he is Mickey Mantle.
Money is the crucial element determining who makes it through a hospital’s door when an expensive form of treatment is needed. If you do not have money or insurance, then celebrity will do, because that either will help you get money or will attract profitable attention to the medical center.
If you need a $300,000 procedure and lack health insurance, as some 25 million Americans do, bring lots of money or at least become notorious before you head for the hospital.
Mickey Mantle probably will not be remembered as a crusader for health care reform. But the fact that the baseball legend gained quick access to a liver transplant points out flaws in the system so profound and fundamental that they ought to be addressed right away.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Art Caplan King Features Syndicate