Again, I had found myself in health-care heaven. Where the relationship between parent and pediatrician continues until the child's high school graduation picture is on the office bulletin board.
You can argue that this kind of care is a thing of the past. Like the time Dr. Kinsel came with his black bag to my mother's house (she had no car while my father worked) to give me an injection after an alarming allergic reaction to strawberries.
I have plenty of anecdotes like these. And I can gather plenty more with just a couple of phone calls. The kinds of doctor-patient relationships they describe are not a conceit. They are not a luxury or a throwback to another time or an example of pampering Western medicine.
They are an economy born of relationships.
My doctor rarely needs to send me to a specialist or for a battery of tests to figure out what is wrong with me. She knows me well enough. There is real savings there.
And my pediatrician knew me well enough to trust me.
We are beginning what they are calling "a historic, summerlong debate" on the reform of health care, a system lawmakers have been trying to fix since FDR failed to get health care included in his proposal for Social Security 70 years ago.
This time, unlike President Bill Clinton's attempt in 1993, all the players - hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, drug companies - are at the table because, as one wag said, they don't want to be on the menu.
On that table are proposals that each will find completely distasteful: mandated coverage, the federal government as insurance provider, cost controls, taxes on employee health benefits. To continue the food analogy, this is sausage no one wants to see being made.
People love to talk about their health problems, so one more story.
When yet another health insurance change required me to leave the doctor who knows me so well for a year, I found myself in the care of a health care giant and assigned to a doctor based on my home address.
During my time under her care, we communicated through the magic of e-mail. Appointment requests, referrals, medication refills, medical questions, test results. My records were at her fingertips - via the computer keyboard - when we "talked." The speed of her reassuring communication was a wonder.
Going back in time may not be the only way to improve health care.
Susan Reimer's column appears on Mondays.
