Today in Houston nearly 2000 folks came to Reliant Stadium for, in some cases, desperately needed medical treatment. Shamefully, Texas has the highest number of uninsured residents. The story is particularly ugly in Houston where 1 in 3 adults are uninsured.
Dr. Oz who runs the free health clinic compared the number of uninsured, untreated people as a national disaster comparable to that of Hurricane Katrina. According to him, Houston and the rest of Texas, a health care Katrina happens everyday.
Despite the shameful statistics on the lack of health coverage, our elected U.S. lawmakers John Cornyn, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and in my case, John Culberson (Houston-7), continue to wage war against health care reform. As with Katrina while the world watched, Republicans showed they were not in the least bit concerned about the hurricane's victims, some of whom horribly drowned and others who, to this very day, are displaced. Republican behavior with health care reform is exactly the same. The message: Let 'em eat Advil or drop dead. It ain't our problem. Me and mine are just fine.
When not running free health clinics Dr. Oz is a professor of cardiac medicine at Columbia University. He also hosts a TV show about health issues at 3:00 p.m., M-F. Needless to say, the doctor's show is very popular.
Below are examples of just two uninsured who desperately needed Dr. Oz's help.
A man who arrived later in the day, Anthony DeLane, was whisked away by ambulance to Ben Taub General Hospital. A diabetic ulcer on his foot was so infected that it had opened up and exposed bone, said Dr. G. Bobby Kapur, a Taub emergency physician and Baylor College of Medicine professor. Without quick care, the infection could have spread into his bloodstream or his leg.
"If we don't get to it fast, instead of losing a toe, he may lose a foot or a whole leg," said Kapur, one of the medical directors of Saturday's clinic. "He had not been able to get care for five years because he doesn't have insurance. He's self-employed."
Fourteen-month-old Analeigha Rivera turned out to be one of Oz's youngest patients.
Mother Victoria Rivera learned that her baby has a potentially life-threatening heart murmur.
"Dr. Oz said that where her hole is at, it can cause heart failure and cause her lungs to harden up. It could cause her to stop breathing," said Rivera, 25, of Freeport, who brought all five of her children for checkups. "Her Medicaid was dropped when she turned 1. ... We're looking for a clinic around who will take her."
Ron Cookston, executive director of Gateway to Care, said he spoke to an alarming number of middle-class people who don't know how to navigate the free and reduced-cost health care system.
"The most important thing is for people to have a place where they go to the doctor on a regular basis that is not an emergency room," Cookston said. "We've seen people from Chambers, Liberty and Galveston. People have come from a long distance."
How many more folks have to suffer before Congress can grow two major body parts: a heart and cojones.
