Access to health care is not what the government thinks it means. It means more government and less actual health care. In the era of a global pandemic, it isn’t pretty.

President Biden put out another doozy of a press release today when he announced the extension of the health insurance enrollment period. In a declaration much like a king would make, he declared “health care is right, not a privilege” and “No one should have to lay awake at night staring at the ceiling wondering what they are going to do to get the care they need.” We won’t split the very important hair that healthcare is not listed in the Bill of Rights or its Amendments. As the king’s proclamation continues, the lines between actual healthcare and COVID blur significantly.

Fine. The deadline to sign up for Obamacare has been extended. Plan accordingly.

But what healthcare doth the king speak of? Getting needed care? Really?

Word amongst the peasants says that isn’t happening. At all. Pandemic lockdowns requiring health care providers to cancel preventative and elective procedures and surgeries is resulting in tragic and deadly consequences.

Preventative care such as mammograms, non-COVID vaccines, colonoscopies, and PAP smears plummeted in 2020.

“…preventative care procedures generally have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, said Daniel Kurowski, senior researcher at HCCI (Health Care Cost Institute)”.

How does one get access to the healthcare they need if the same government espousing access to healthcare won’t allow access to the healthcare one needs? Great question.

Scientists–you know, the ones Kamala said she trusts—are projecting sobering outcomes after almost a year of deferred access to healthcare other than COVID related health care.

“Due to delayed diagnosis and care issues caused by COVID-19…the model suggests almost 10,000 excess deaths from both types of cancer over the next decade, or about a 1% increase…This analysis is conservative…as it does not consider other cancer types, it does not account for the additional nonlethal morbidity from upstaging, and it assumes a moderate disruption in care that completely resolves after 6 months. It also does not account for regional variations in the response to the pandemic, and these effects may be less severe in parts of the country with shorter or less severe lockdowns.”

A recent study breaks down the impact of increased time-to-treatment initiation (TTI), the interval between diagnosis and therapy, delays.

“We found that all benefitted to some degree from a short interval between diagnosis and therapy.”

Kind of hard to do when places those procedures are performed continue to be closed—because COVID. Yes, even now—eleven months later after hearing the term “flattening the curve”—medical facilities are closed to elective and non-essential procedures. As recently as January, Texas health officials closed facilities. Cleveland closed shop in November. Access to health care? How does that work when health care is shuttered?

Other areas of medicine are impacted. Vision care. Certainly not as deadly as foregoing cancer screenings, but certainly tragic.

A USA Today opinion piece from last summer touts the risks to public health when patients can’t access health care either by closed doors or fear.

“…some patients are fearful of the risk of COVID-19 associated with visiting hospitals and clinics.”

Amongst Team Victory Girls, we have our own stories amongst family and friends where delayed or sub-par preventative care had undesired outcomes with sad consequence, and yet preventable.

Access to health care, Mr. President, is not achieved by simply extending a deadline for government run health care. Far from it.

King Biden is not finished yet, today’s press release goes on to say he’s pushing Congress to pass the American Rescue Plan.

“…which will ramp up testing, tracing, and our national vaccination program to get shots into as many arms as possible as quickly as we can. The American Rescue Plan will also take big steps to lower health costs and expand access to care for all Americans, including those who have lost their jobs. It will increase federal subsidies and decrease premiums in order to ensure that no one pays more than 8.5 percent of their income to purchase meaningful and comprehensive health coverage.”

Ah yes, don’t let a good crisis go to waste—use it to expand an already broken health care system. Expanding government health care does not mean access to health care, as we’ve tragically found out. Take a quick look around family. Anyone who has deferred a preventative procedure, please pick up the phone and get on the appointment books. Don’t let the current crisis become a tragedy that hits too close to home.

Feature Image credit: wp paarz via Flickr; CC BY-SA 2.0 license; image cropped