A Post Dedicated to My Dad

This was featured in Thursday's Metro paper:

Love & the high cost of health care
My father wasn’t exactly the huggy type. I don’t remember him ever saying “I love you,” but I knew he cared because he gave me pills. Once when I was 10 and I couldn’t sleep he gave me half a yellow pill — my first Valium. No, he wasn’t a pusher, but a physician who liberally medicated his own family. Benadryl for hay fever, Zantac for gas, Lomotil for diarrhea (what Dad called “loose stools”) — a pill for every discomfort.

Looking back on my childhood, I realize that my father loved me in the way he knew how. A man of science, he nurtured with pills. And facts. During my adult life, when my mother was dying of cancer, he kept me updated about her CA count and white blood cell count and the status of her organs. Actually, I found this rather comforting. I had grown accustomed to Western Doctor Daddy love.

He’s now retired, but I still call Dad to diagnose this or that pain.
“Dad,” I asked him recently, alarmed at the cost of my health insurance, “why does health care cost so much?”
“Well, new treatments are getting more expensive.”“Like what?”
“New drugs. New technology.”

This made sense. Recently, I’d read in the newspaper about a “smart” new drug for cancer. It can extend your life, usually for about three months. Cost: $8,000 per month.My lefty friends argue that the real cause of rising health care costs is corporate greed. The drug companies and the insurance industry, they’re sticking it to us. Someone with Buddhist inclinations might argue that, ultimately, Americans are victims of corporate greed because we lack a spiritual center. Instead of meditating to detach from busy-brain, for example, we turn to Lunesta, which comes to kiss us with peaceful slumber. Our materialistic culture feeds on intolerance for discomfort, on terror of pain and fear of death, and the inexplicable void beyond. This spiritual impoverishment fuels the need for new treatments. But, as for me, I know what’s really at the root of skyrocketing health care costs. Those Doctor Daddies in the medical establishment, the researchers, all of those men (and women) of science, they are simply loving us as best they know how.
And as they say, love knows no bounds.

Mary Grover is a freelance writer living in New York.