From the Editor’s Desk: Advocate (Premium)

Note: I’ve decided to move the From the Editor’s Desk editorial to the site so that it can appear as a normal article, can be found with search, and is more easily discoverable. I have been posting this past year’s editorials, which originally appeared in the Thurrott Premium newsletter each Monday, into the forums. And so I’m going to look at moving those into the main site as well. ---Paul

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As you might imagine, I’ve spent the past month or so obsessed with some of the health-related topics I’ve discussed recently, most specifically my daily glucose measurements. But thinking about this topic more broadly, two things stand out to me. One is that notion that our healthcare system is so broken that insurance companies aren’t just doing what’s best---and what’s less expensive in the long term---for the customers, but also for them. And two, how important it is that we all advocate for ourselves, not just with health-related matters but in all parts of our lives.

Regarding the former, my wife and I walk each morning and we spend much of that time talking about anything and everything. This month, a lot of the talk has been about health-related topics, of course. And because she writes about health and nutrition anyway, and literally speaks each week with doctors, nutritionists, and people who have had positive health outcomes, I’ve been able to map what I’m doing to her own body of knowledge.

And it is astonishing to me how often the system gets in the way. This one came from an article she read, not a person she met, but there was a pregnant woman who came down with a urinary tract infection and needed a common antibiotic---one that you could get over the counter here in Mexico, by the way---that cost all of $12. But insurance company bureaucracy delayed and then prevented her from getting it, and she ended up with complications that required expensive hospitalization and monitoring to ensure that she didn’t give birth prematurely. Treating her after the problems occurred cost that company a lot more than just getting her the inexpensive antibiotic she needed up-front. And we can only imagine the mental damage this episode caused this poor woman and her family.

We aren’t going to fix the healthcare industry here. But what we can do is advocate for ourselves, as I did recently with my doctor, something I’d not previously done for much of my life. And while health care is obviously right at the top of the list when it comes to those times in which you need to stand up for yourself, it’s not the only example. Indeed, we will probably never run out of examples. But I do have two recent experiences that help demonstrate how important this is.

In 2015, I purchased my father’s 2007 Mercedes C280 and drove it home, cross-country. I used this vehicle for a few years and then passed it along to my daughter Kelly, probably in 2018. (At which point my wife convinced me that the two of us only needed o...