Gerald Gollin, M.D., comments on pediatric underfunding
Gerald Gollin, M.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, comments on the underfunding of pediatric care in El Paso, and the implications for access to care for all of us:
I am one of the pediatric surgeons mentioned in the NY Times article who left El Paso because a children's hospital was not built. The article is exactly right that the situation in El Paso is what much of the rest of the country can expect with the current system. Just making more people eligible to share the same limited pot of funds is not going to work, even though it makes us feel good to say that more people are being "covered". The only way that my partners and I can make it in Southern California is that we have a mechanism to share in the disproportionate share that our hospital receives from the state. If not for that, it would be impossible to care for our population that is well over 50% MediCal. The shortage of pediatric subspecialists in California is critical and it effects all children--even those with full insurance. It is the same situation in El Paso. There are no pediatric surgeons--no matter how much money a patient's family has--so a child with a surgical emergency is up the creek.
Gerald Gollin, MD
Comment: Dr. Gollin clearly confirms the premise in yesterday's quote and comment. In spite of our great resources, we do not have an effective structural system for allocation that would assure efficiency in the use of those resources. Dr. Gollin has demonstrated that our current fragmented system of allocation has resulted in the total deprivation of pediatric surgical services for everyone living in El Paso, and also has resulted in the need to resort to the defective and unreliable policies of gamesmanship and cost shifting to fund pediatric surgical services in a mecca of health care.
Maldistribution of resources is not just a problem for the poor. It is now affecting all of us, even the most affluent. The Los Angeles Times published an article that provides yet another example. Inadequate resources are being directed to our emergency rooms, threatening their solvency. This is partly because of the burden of caring for uninsured individuals that, by default, are forced to use emergency rooms as their primary source of care. In a follow-up editorial, the Los Angeles Times stated what this means to all of us. "We can be rich. We can have health insurance. We can have our federal tax rebate check in our back pocket. None of this will do us any good if we're in the back of an ambulance and the nearest hospital emergency room is full."
Providers will always compete with each other for the resources that we do have. But if this competition occurs within a system designed to optimize allocation, we will all have access to better care. Only a unified, single payer system offers this promise. Health policy analysts understand this. But if we are to convert this principle into action, we must make every effort to be sure that the voters understand as well.
Los Angeles Times:
"Amid Nationwide Prosperity, ERs See a Growing Emergency" <http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-000063865aug06.story>http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-000063865aug06.story
Editorial, "Closed Door at the ER" <http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000064011aug07.story>http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000064011aug07.story
The New York Times:
"A City Struggles to Provide Care Ensured by U.S." <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/07/national/07CARE.html>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/07/national/07CARE.html