Julie Pippert: Using My Words

2012 has chosen its theme: The Year of Misplaced Trust. In large part, this is being let down by folks I trusted to care for my kids. Yesterday was another example of this. Persistence has been struggling with hearing issues, and all that stems from that, due to consistently congested ears. Nothing we've done has helped. We started seeing specialists about this early in the year, but we really amped up our efforts this fall. It's been a rough go, involving a lot of tests, poking, prodding, and constantly disrupted lives with doctor visits. She's worn out with it all. And it's a lot of hard and complex stuff for a little kid to process. She's being a champ about it, of course, because if ever a kid had a heart for putting her head down and plowing through, she's that kid. But she's ready for it to be finished. She's ready to have it fixed. And she's ready to launch into catching up on all she's missed and gotten behind on because her hearing...

One thing we like to rail about is the high cost of health care -- and justly so. On the one hand, I don't mind paying doctors for their specialty (who wants to be the guy who says, "hey I want the cheapest doctor! who cares about credentials!") or drug companies for the healing medications they spend years and millions developing. On the other hand, sometimes I think we just aren't smart enough about our health care. Sometimes I think we are too fast to accept health care exactly as dispensed and too slow to consider ways to make it work better for us (our bodies and our wallets). Let me share a short anecdote and a few things I learned this week about being smarter with health care, choices we have that we may not know about and how to get doctors and pharmacists on board. In short, let me tell you about being an empowered patient who takes charge of our own health and wellness. It all started last Wednesday when the pediatrician leaned back from my daughter...