From my brilliant friend in Texas, Dr. Aurel Emilian Mircea:
Hello readers of all denominations!
I did not mean to brag or to bore you with my Texas-pride, but while writing and publishing “Medical Epicenter,” a new collection of short stories, I had to openly admire the largest medical city in the world. Texas Medical Center in Houston, with which I have been associated for more than twenty-five years, is by far the biggest and best on the globe.
It contains 54 medicine-related institutions, with 21 hospitals and 8 specialty facilities, 8 medical academic and research foundations, 4 medical schools, 7 nursing schools, 3 public health organizations, 2 pharmacy colleges and one dental school. It has the world’s best and biggest Children Hospital and the most advanced Cancer Institute, MD Anderson. Furthermore, the “Medical Epicenter,” as I called it in my recently published book, is the 8th largest business district in America and has 50 million square feet of commercial buildings with 20,000 doctors and 100,000 auxiliary nursing and medical staff. It performs more than 13,000 heart surgeries, delivers 25,000 babies and attends to 8 million patients a year.
In this giant healthcare environment, I have a small story to tell you, especially to those readers with a medical background. 10 years ago, when I had my first extensive cardiac tests done with the DeBakey Cardiology Group at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, I’ve met a skilled cardiac technician named Pedro. In our conversations about the medical world, he had mentioned a few encounters with the visiting international patients and American celebrities. One of them was about the famous Nobel Peace Prize winner, Lech Walesa. The ex-Prime Minister of Poland had arrived a few months earlier for a scheduled heart transplant. Back in Warsaw, a cardiology team at the best hospital had recommended that the ailing national hero should have the procedure done, as soon as possible.
Where else should such a procedure be done to perfection, than in Houston, Texas at the Methodist Hospital in the world’s “Medical Epicenter?”
Subsequently, the same surgeon who operated on me a few years later was assigned to take over Lech Walesa’s case, after all the tests were done according to the in-house protocol. A few days later, while the pre-transplant procedures were in progress, Pedro came across a good set of tests results. Suddenly the prognosis for Lech Walesa made a huge turn for the better. While the DeBakey Cardiology Group experts were scratching their heads about the previous cardiac recommendations for a heart transplant, they have soon concluded that a simple Boston Scientific Pacemaker should do it.
A short while later, the famous liberator of Poland and one of the crucial persons in bringing down the Iron Curtain, was a happy owner of an implanted cardiac pacemaker. Apparently to this day, according to the “Medical Epicenter’s” grapevine, he is doing very well with his own, old and patriotic, Polish heart.
“What a miraculous outcome!” Pedro told me, a few weeks later, when I returned for my follow-up tests. “Doc, you should’ve seen the famous Polish politician doing a Polka dance in my office, after I did his last cardio scan, which showed his heart to be as good as new!”
Morale of the Story
No matter how well intended are the socialized medicine principles, the fiscal limitations and central government control over the delivery of healthcare makes it as infertile as a castrated horse. To this day, more than 50 years from the implementation of the socialized medicine, in the UK they are still waiting for 9 months for a hip replacement and more than one year for a coronary bypass.
Remember Comrade Boris Yeltsin in the early 90s? He was the first freely-elected President of the post-Soviet Russia and a heavy, daily Vodka consumer. His alcohol-weakened heart was also fixed by the Debakey Group from Houston, since no one in the whole of Europe, eastward of Madrid could perform a reliable open, coronary bypass surgery. The Texas Medical Center specially-selected team flew in to Moscow, with a private jet filled with advanced equipment, heart medicines, surgical supplies, specialized nurses and Dr. Michael DeBakey and Dr. George Noon, two of the world’s best cardiac surgeons.
Talking to me at my mother-in-law’s bedside a few years later, Dr. Noon and I we were exchanging personal experiences about the healthcare system behind the old Iron Curtain. We were both correlating the simple facts that the communist-style healthcare still could not provide such simple basics, as disposable surgical gloves. During my days as one of the many “Barefoot Doctors” in the communist Romanian rural world and later as an ENT specialist in Warsaw, Poland, the gloves were always recycled and sterilized on a daily basis! Disposable gloves were not invented as yet, never mind CT scans or advanced surgical procedures…
Let freedom ring in the capitalist healthcare!
***
Aurel Emilian Mircea, M.D. was born in Romania and graduated from the Medical School in Bucharest, at the peak of the communist regime. During his college days he became a professional musician, which later helped him make his way to the Free World. After a sojourn through Poland and South Africa he settled permanently in Texas, USA. In his retirement he had published a few books about healthcare and the very competitive world of showbiz.
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