Take Back Control

I’m not unique.

Or special. And neither is my story of struggle.

Like so many people in the country, I grew up poor as sh*t - without health insurance and without predictable access to healthcare.

The emergency room WAS my “primary care doctor.”
I was anxious & scared all the time, yet ‘non-compliant’ w/meds & follow up.
And even if I’d understood what needed done & how, I couldn’t afford it anyway.

My family and my community had the audacity to be poor, so that’s just how it goes. But now things are so out of control and hard to manage that no one is safe.

Today, who doesn’t know someone whose life has been threatened or ruined by the ‘healthcare’ system?

The stories are everywhere.

The untreated mental health problems that turn into addiction, or suicide.
The rationed insulin that becomes an ER visit, a hospitalization & bankruptcy.
The family member that’s lost to homelessness & despair because they have no idea what else to do.

I had dinner with an ER doc last week, a friend, who told me that she’d recently diagnosed a patient with colon cancer.

The patient was a stay-at-home dad ‘between health insurance.’

She wasn’t convinced he would have the courage, the money or the ability to navigate the system to get the life-saving follow-up care he needed to see his kids go to college.

She actually thought it was more likely he’d decide that his wife and 4 kids would be better off if he were dead instead of ‘driving their family into debt for his treatment.’

I had ideas.

I explained a handful of viable options for affording care & navigating the process specific to his particular case.

She was speechless. Shocked.

She had no idea that there was a parallel universe being created in real time to solve issues exactly like this one.

She didn’t know because almost no one does.

How many people are sitting contemplating horrible, horrible tragic things because they don’t even know what they don’t know?

Solutions exist, but we’ve already given up.

We’ve given in to a system that is too expensive, too complex & too overwhelming to navigate -so much that suicide seems like a ‘reasonable option’ to an ER DOCTOR.

It’s a sh*t hand that no one deserves, but most (even the insured) find yourselves in.

It took me decades, to crawl out of poverty.

Thank God by way of the NFL, German medical school, research at Hopkins, and eventually rural ERs on the Maryland & Delaware coasts, I found the strength and the community I’ve been looking for.

And since then, I’ve traveled the country speaking to patients, health care experts, policy makers, doctors, PAs, nurses and health insurance gurus looking for answers and I’m finding them.

Reforming the American Healthcare System. And while the stories that I hear are heartbreaking.

Solutions are everywhere.

They go counter to the narratives that we’ve been taught since childhood.

And they require us to take ownership and responsibility for what happens to us, but they are waiting patiently - poised & waiting for us to grab hold.

My only goal in publishing this letter is to make you aware of the power that you already have over your own body and your own health journey.

The power that I know you aren’t using only because you don’t know how yet.

I want to share everything.

You don’t have to live without hope or direction anymore. And just in case I’m not being clear, here’s what I’m saying.

No matter what anyone tells you, hear this:

YOU are the only decision maker that matters.

YOU are the boss.

Not your doctor.
Not your employer.
Not your pharmacist.
Not the insurance company.

It starts and ends with you - it always has.

They say parenting doesn’t have a handbook, and it doesn’t (as far as I know), but being a patient doesn’t have one either.

It’s time for that to change.

Join us for imperfect discussions, ideas and strategy to inform and empower your health and healthcare journey.