Medicine by the Mafia

A friend of mine was stationed in Naples, Italy, for several years. When I asked him what he thought of it, he told me that it smells like burning garbage and prostitutes are everywhere. The funny thing is that these two facts are connected.

Naples is a mafia town. They control garbage collection. Sopranos fans are not surprised. Art imitates life. Everybody hires the mafia to collect their garbage because “or I’ll break your knees” is surprisingly effective marketing. Gangsters don’t pick up the garbage regularly. I guess they’re busy. Who does an irate customer complain to? Vinnie? Fugheddaboutit. Everyone gives the garbage service 5 stars even though they’re in their backyard burning trash.

Of course, prostitution is also run by the mafia. The ladies (and men) on the street do all the real work, but they’re violently controlled by their pimps, who control what they do, who they service, and how much they earn. The mafia profits handsomely by controlling access to their “company.”

I do want to say that I know that organized crime is not just an Italian thing. Crime syndicates exist all over the world. Wherever there’s money.

Just a Little Visit to the Doctor

“Where is this little meditation about the mafia going,” you may ask. Stay with me.

Last summer, I ended up in the emergency room with a pinched nerve. I’ve never experienced pain like that in my life. I thought it was a blood clot and that I’d stroke out on the way to the beach. First, I went to an urgent care, but they didn’t have an ultrasound. After taking my copay, they forwarded me to the hospital. An ultrasound confirmed that I wasn’t in immediate danger of death, so the doctor prescribed Lidocaine patches and muscle relaxers.

My visit to the ER also gave me a major headache… of the financial kind. For my five minute consult with the ER doc and the ultrasound of my left leg, I got a bill for $3,200. When I saw the bill, I just about had a heart attack.

I called people. I complained. I called more people. It turns out that my health insurance from the food bank has zero emergency room coverage. The full amount of the visit hits my deductible, which is also outrageously high. To add insult to injury, if I’d paid cash at the hospital, the bill would have been closer to $1,200. Since the visit had already billed it to insurance, they couldn’t change it. “I’m so sorry,” said the billing person who was paid to buffer the hospital from angry patients.

I’m still paying for that ER visit. Oh, and my back isn’t fixed. I still have partial numbness in my left foot due to an S1 radiculopathy on my left side (if you say that out loud it sounds like “ridiculous,” which is so fitting). My options are 1. Wait until it resolves (which it has been slowly doing), or 2. have back surgery. I’m working on option number one for the time being.

Lenny Two-Fingers Will See You Now

When I complained to our CEO about our health insurance, she replied, “Our coverage sucks, I’m so sorry.” She’s trying to balance the cost of providing insurance for her staff against premiums that have increased 20% over the past five years.

Complaining to insurance companies is like throwing darts at a sand dune. It doesn’t matter to them that my back issue hasn’t been resolved or that a 5 minute visit to the ER cost three weeks of my salary. They are not in the business of providing health care. They are in the business of collecting health insurance premiums and deductibles. Health care is just a cost that they try to minimize because it affects their bottom line. They have devised an endless loop of forms and someone else to call that slowly saps the will to resist. If I don’t pay up, they send the bill to collections and destroy my credit rating.

I do truly have compassion for the doctors and the medical professionals in this whole scenario. I have some wonderful friends in the medical community who really care about people and want to heal them. But they don’t work for their patients. They work for the insurance companies. Doctors hate it, but what can they do? Like the mafia managing call girls, health insurance companies dictate how much time doctors can spend with their patients, what procedures can be done, and what medicines can be provided. They measure success according to revenue, not health outcomes. Betta have my money.

Your death or chronic disease is a net positive for them as long as your premiums bring in more than your care costs. This brings us back to Naples. When you think about it, a dumpster fire in the red light district is a pretty good analogy for the state of our health care system.

Desperate for Healing

The whole situation made my blood boil, which is not healthy. So I prayed about it. For a long time.

The first scripture that came to mind was the gospel story about the woman with the issue of blood. “And a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years, who had spent her whole livelihood on doctors and was unable to be cured by anyone…” Luke 8:43-48.

Two key items jumped to my attention: outrageous medical costs, and ineffective medicine. I found it strangely comforting that medical billing and powerless doctors is not a new issue. Two thousand years ago, the experience so frustrated St. Veronica (as tradition names the woman), that she braved the crowd to seek Jesus’ healing touch.

St. Veronica was desperate for help. She’d pursued every remedy that she could find, but nothing helped. When she was completely broke after twelve years of failed remedies, she heard about Jesus and His miracles. She found Him surrounded by others who had also heard about Him.

Then the mystery of God’s providence dawned on me. If she hadn’t been sick, if she hadn’t been poor, she wouldn’t have been there. She wouldn’t have had the opportunity to act in faith that Jesus could heal. She wouldn’t have experienced the healing that came from touching the hem of Jesus’ garment. And she wouldn’t have started following Jesus and been present at His crucifixion when she used her veil to wipe His face, giving us the Holy Face image.

Somehow, in the mystery of God’s love for her, her sickness and suffering became the catalyst for her conversion. There was a blessing hidden in the darkness.

The Good Doctor

My prayer then took me to St. Luke the Evangelist. At some point, St. Luke heard about Jesus, too. We don’t have a record of his conversion, but Jesus Christ transformed his life. St. Paul refers to St. Luke as the beloved physician (Colossians 4:14), so we know that he was a doctor. He accompanied St. Paul on many of his missionary journeys, riding out the shipwreck at Malta and staying with him while he was imprisoned in Rome. At some point during these journeys, he wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts.

I imagine that the stories of Jesus’ miracles played a role in his conversion, too. He also got to see and experience many of St. Paul’s miracles first hand. At some point in his life, he experienced the same need for Jesus that changed St. Veronica. Maybe, as a doctor, the stories of a healing power that was beyond the knowledge of men called to him, drew him in. Like Veronica and St. Paul, he left everything to follow Jesus’ call on his life.

I know so many medical professionals who have experienced something like this, who see their profession as a gospel ministry. Our family pediatrician is a great example. He loves the Lord and he really loves our children. He sees his work as a living out of the Gospel call to heal the sick. When you have six children, a good pediatrician is a gift from God.

Follow Zacchaeus

The last scripture God took me to was the story of Zacchaeus. A despised tax collector for the Roman occupation, Zacchaeus was still curious about this Jesus guy. When Jesus came through town, Zacchaeus climbed a tree so he could see over the heads of the crowd. Jesus called to him and invited himself over to dinner at his house. The Pharisees in the crowd were appalled that Jesus would eat with such a public sinner.

Jesus didn’t harass and chastise Zacchaeus. He ate dinner with him. At some point in that conversation, Zacchaeus was transformed, converted. “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” (Luke 19:8) In the Gospel, this reads as a spontaneous outpouring of generosity and justice. Zacchaeus experienced the love of God, and it drove the love of money out of his heart. The love of God then made room in his heart for love of neighbor.

Contemplating this scripture made me realize something. My anger and unforgiveness toward the insurance companies lumped me in with the Pharisees, who hated the tax collectors like Zacchaeus. Like them, I wanted God to smite the bill collectors and rain fire on them from heaven.

But Jesus had other plans. He saw Zacchaeus in the tree, and being a Good Shepherd, knew him by name. He also knows the person who apologized on behalf of the hospital by name. He knows the actuaries calculating the new premiums by name. He knows the collections agents by name. He wants to save them and transform the way they do business. He wants to purge them of the love of money so He can fill them with the love of God and the love of neighbor.

Be a Light in the Darkness

Then God hit me with the final punch. Aetna needs Jesus. United Healthcare needs Jesus. Exactly the way that Zacchaeus the tax collector needed Jesus. Just like those Neapolitan mobsters need Jesus. Just like me. We’re all sick. We’re all in bondage to our sin. None of us can save ourselves. We need a Savior. We all need Jesus.

In each of those three Bible stories, an encounter with Jesus transformed someone’s life. I shouldn’t be surprised. It happened to me. When the Light of Jesus pierces the darkness of our sin and suffering, it changes everything. But there are a lot of people out there that haven’t had that kind of life-changing encounter.

This is the part you and I can play. We can shine the light of Jesus into the darkness. My friend’s mom was on death’s door in the ICU with acute liver failure, and she started singing with the nurses and techs, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he!” The techs marveled at her faith and good humor. Thanks be to God, she’s recovering, but in the midst of that darkness, she brought the light of Jesus and shared it with others.

When something happens that spikes my blood pressure, I have to keep one fact firmly in mind. Jesus came to save the world, not condemn it. The way I respond to what’s happening can shine His light in the darkness. There’s always an opportunity.

It makes you wonder. How would Jesus like Naples? He’d probably end up at a barbecue with the mafiosos and prostitutes, and maybe even a few insurance executives. I just hope I’m invited.