Madeleine had her long-awaited trip to the pediatric orthopedist yesterday. While he is not overly concerned that she isn't walking yet at close to the 18 month mark and didn't find any significant structural problems in her feet/legs, he does think that she should start to use a small brace on her ankles to give her a little more support (thanks, Grandma Mary) and do a bit of physical therapy to improve her coordination and move the process along (thanks, Grandpa Tom).
If we were still in Virginia, we would already have the braces and our first physical therapy appointment lined up. Of course, this being California, nothing works that easily (see Daddy's diatribe on the California health care system beneath the photos).
We've noticed that she's gaining a lot more confidence in trying to stand up on her own over the last week or so - perhaps it's just a matter of putting all the pieces together.
Daddy's Soapbox/Editorial Moment: While Daddy's days at the epicenter of public policy are (thankfully) over, we have been watching the national debate on health care with some degree of interest. The system is clearly screwed up and in desperate need of repair - but I hope our national leaders don't look to California as a model of what to do.
California is one of the only states in the country that not only has HMOs and insurance companies - but something called
physician groups - large groups of doctors who band together to protect themselves against the HMOs as well as trying to provide some degree of cost savings through the strength-in-numbers approach. In theory, this should work well - allowing doctors to reduce overhead costs by pooling resources and have greater leverage versus insurance company bureaucrats.
In practice, these groups essentially behave as mini-HMOs - meaning that every health care transaction engages not one, but two soulless health care bureaucracies
who care more about forms and authorization numbers than getting treatment for their patients.
The upshot of all of this is that it will take at least two weeks to get the "authorization" for Madeleine's ankle braces - and the physical therapy group has told us that they do not have any appointments available through the rest of the calendar year. Yes, that's right - it's June and we have to be wait-listed for the rest of the year. Even worse, we don't have the right to go to another provider not affiliated with that physician group because it would be considered "out of network" even if the other provider accepts our insurance plan.
Who suffers under this kind of system? Our kid. But no one seems to care except us.
I hope the national health care debate has moved beyond the
Hillarycare days and can produce not only a rational discussion but also an intelligent and financially sustainable solution. But I hope and pray that our dear leaders in Washington don't look to the most populous state in the country for ideas, because they ain't here.
The reality is that healthcare run by government bureaucrats isn't the solution but neither is the current system run by HMO and physician group bureaucrats -
the entire financial and legal structure underpinning the delivery of health care is just flawed and needs to be fixed to get the middleman out of the doctor-patient relationship as much as possible.
I don't think the current crop of political leaders is up to the task but I hope I'm wrong!
-- Post From My iPhone
