by Jennifer Bioche

Created on: December 16, 2009

I am sitting in a crowded terminal of Chicago O’Hare, cooling my heels after waiting over 21 hours for a 45 minute flight back to my home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The customer service line is 40 people deep. I was returning, or attempting to, from Detroit after saying a fond good-bye to my maternal Grandmother who died just shy of 96 years.

 And while grief was the prevailing thought, a quiet understanding came over me. It was time to forget the plane that wasn’t coming, rent a car and drive home.

 It wasn’t the unthinkable inconvenience that bothered me, but the realization that the airlines had taken my money without delivering the agreed upon product. And the reaction of my fellow passengers revealed why this is. They were going along with it all. Not questioning the supplier, just queuing up like sheep and saying “please, please” with a cherry on top.

This is also the problem with health care. Like air line passengers held hostage at a gate, consumers are over looking the actual power they have to reduce health care costs. I am absolutely guilty as charged.

As a mother of four I made countless mistakes as a consumer of medical care.  I accepted blindly to wait sometimes for hours for a pediatrician even with an appointment.  Emotionally vulnerable, worried for a sick child, it didn’t occur to me to question the system.  And I kept paying insurance premiums, usually for medical services my family really didn’t need. 

Take those never ending “milestone” appointments.  “Is she grasping objects with a thumb and finger? Still drinking from a sippy cup? Sitting up alone or with help?” Sadly, my insurance paid for this mommy and me time, looking back, taking away resources from a real medical emergency. In a sense, I was contributing to the “pork” or the system.

During four pregnancies, I went along with the monthly visits, but it was on my fourth child that the mandatory ultra sound started to not make sense. I wasn’t high risk, and didn’t at all want to know the gender of my child. I should have declined, my baby no worse for wear. But it wasn’t until the 20 year old tech accidently showed me the gender did I actually get annoyed. Again, more wasted resources, and me, the clueless consumer contributing to the problem.

If patients operated like restaurant patrons- shopping around, budgeting for big ticket items, the business of medicine

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