How Trump Changed Basic Health Care Questions, and What's Next if He Wins
What's in store in the next weeks?
Check out my recent essays in Business Insider and Compound Butter, and my poems in Allium, a Journal of Poetry and Prose and I-70 Review.
Years ago, after Barack Obama was first elected but not yet inaugurated, my sister-in-law was in a car crash. Emergency first-responders asked her who was president and she paused. She wasn’t quite sure how to answer because of the timeline, and her lack of immediacy prompted more questions.
“Who is the president?” used to be a standard question to help assess an individual’s cognitive ability after a possible concussion or other health ailments. But the Trump administration changed what used to be, for all intents and purposes, a mundane question.
As the election looms, I can’t help thinking about an anecdote a nurse told me about in 2018. To gauge patients’ awareness, she kept politics out of it. “We don’t ask them who the president is anymore,” she said. “It upsets them too much.”
This isn’t necessarily a widespread policy, and different hospitals have different standards. But it’s certainly a testament to how standard routines have been disrupted by politics—and how politics influences procedures and interrupts routines in medical spaces. Much has been said about health care as policy but these nuances make me think of health care as a response to policy.
When I was growing up, there was a distinct separation that was emphasized between politics and government. Perhaps that’s because it was the Midwest, but there was a strait-laced acceptance of leadership in a way that didn’t inherently feel political, regardless of ideological affiliations. It was a common refrain to hear growing up in a religious community to “pray for your leaders” regardless of if you supported them. Obviously, things have changed. The polarization is so extreme and there’s so much to lose that sentiments have evolved, and people are more proactive about holding leadership accountable, which makes sense for the impending consequences related to health care threats.
The reality is that medical residents are opting to avoid states where abortion access is limited. The real-world implications of policies certainly change the trajectory of doctors, but this means that rural areas that are hurting are likely to suffer even more. Rural Americans already have—and have had—less access to health care. Draconian laws that threaten doctors will only exacerbate that issue, which ultimately hurts rural Americans, who are often the foundation of the Republican base.
Now and in the past election cycles, it’s an understatement to say Trump made many promises that were never fulfilled. Remember his health care vow? He promised that his administration was “going to have insurance for everybody.” In reality, his promise was another way to undermine the Affordable Care Act. (He still says he’s going to get Americans “much better health care than Obamacare.”)
My hope for universal health care still lives on. However, it’s quite obvious this structural change would have to be implemented by good-faith leaders. (Other than Bernie Sanders, who made it a main talking point of his campaigns, there has been little serious initiative.)
At the very least, my hope is that destruction and chaos won’t continue to erupt in ways that destabilize the health care ecosystem, an already fragile and imperfect thing in America.
While it was hard to imagine what was at stake almost a decade ago, it’s easier now to be prepared, at least in getting mentally ready for the unknown.
But what will actually happen? Are doctors and patients now living in a state of limbo—or worse, fear? How can language bridge a gap between policy failures, or create a new ones?
With less than a month to go until Election Day, the clock is ticking.
And ICYMI, I had a humor piece, “The Wedding Countdown for the Couple You Vaguely Knew in College Starts Now” in Points In Case.
As always, you can check out more of my work on my website.