One of my proudest accomplishments in my career was developing the J. C. Lewis Health Center along with Melanie Finnacario, Trisha Smith, Regina Smith and Bob Colvin. Others came aboard later but these were the ones who began it all.
It started as primary care clinics in homeless shelters where homeless people go to emergency rooms more than most anyone else. In less than four months, we demonstrated that if you take health care to the people who need it, rather than require them to go to where it is, they get better and hospitals save millions of dollars.
I mean most things are not rocket science.
Those clinics which were located across Savannah, Georgia became this linked network. Then we built the J. C. Lewis Health Center which added an in-patient component. My friend J. C. Lewis was a part of this, but in equal proportions so were St. Joseph/Candler Health System, Earl Mecham from HUD, Ted Hardgrove from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a lot of people from Savannah who believed in the cause.
We were pioneers in the development of the respite care movement in the nation. Over time we added oral health care (which was a throw away idea from Ted) and then Behavioral Health (because I lost my mind).
The Lewis Center eventually became a Federally Qualified Health Center, which is a big deal. Today thousands of people get their health care from it. In the years to come, thousands more patients will be added.
So it was ironic to me yesterday when I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up several prescriptions that I was told that my insurance had lapsed.
I sighed and paid six times as much as I normally would have. Union Mission had given me COBRA and it had yet to be processed. My precious daughter Chelsea and I are among the ranks of the uninsured which I have won numerous national awards for by providing them health care.
The United States may have the best health care in the world, but we have terrible coverage and a lousy system of access. And the President’s plan doesn’t really do much to fix it.
But I stood there laughing at the irony.
At home I fired an email to our agent who immediately responded and told me that it would be fixed within 24 hours. I would be reimbursed for the five times over the amount that I paid. The doctor that I am scheduled to see next week will receive insurance payment after my co-pay.
Chelsea can leave her room.
Union Mission got into health care one day when a man with H.I.V. was too sick to be in the dorm so I put a bed in a broom closet and we took care of him until he died. This led to the Phoenix Project which is one of the nation’s premier programs for people living with AIDS.
A few years later, I was sitting with several homeless men in the courtyard at Grace House asking them why they were so sick. They wore bandages, hacked and coughed and spit in the water fountain and one showed me his chest X-rays. Out of that came the J. C. Lewis Health Center.
But it remains a screwed up system. And Chelsea and I became victims for a little while yesterday. We were able to take care of it, but I have lots of friends who cannot.
A couple of years ago I did the eulogy for a friend of a friend on Tybee who had died way too young. She was a bartender who had cancer and no insurance, meaning she had to pay 100% of the costs. This only happens to the uninsured. A hundred of us were gathered in the bar where she had worked.
So I prayed. “God, please forgive her for being uninsured. But please forgive those who run health care in this country more.”
And it was the only time that I have ever been cheered in the middle of a prayer.
