11. It's Not About the Money

After the delivery, I returned to the ER: J. is 34 and childless, with two weeks of pain and fever and a large pelvic cyst which is probably a tubo-ovarian abscess. With antibiotics and the cyst drained, she'll be okay. She just can't pay a hospital bill that may reach $10,000, which the hospital will just pass on to its insured patients, leaving J. with a bad credit rating. So? It's not like she's in the market to buy a house. But let's say that health care reform would give her access to outpatient health care. Would she have gone in earlier? Would earlier invention have protected her fertility, which I expect is now non-existent? Health care reform is not about money, it's about health.