My name is Dr. Jack Braha, and I live and work in New York City.

I am a second-year Internal Medicine resident, and my daily routine includes checking on twenty-four patients, and discussing their diagnosis plan of care with the nurses, medical students, interns and, of course, with the patients and their families. These patients often lack a primary care physician (pcp), which is much of the reason they land on my medical ward. This means that not only will we be dealing with the acute issues at hand but also with underlying untreated chronic diseases. For patients nearing the end of the hospitalization, we will arrange follow-up care, spend time arranging for the lowest priced drugs to be filled after discharge and then complete the plethora of paperwork associated with this.

I can sum up the worthiness of this sacrifice in both time and cost in a recent patient encounter. Mr. Jones (not his real name) was admitted for respiratory failure and ended up on a ventilator. He was only 33. He was morbidly obese and had bad lung disease from sleep apnea. Now he was in the intensive care unit for pneumonia. As our team of physicians cared for this stranger, who lacked a pcp, we began our plans for his future. Remove the breathing and feeding tubes, then take care of his hypertension and newly diagnosed heart disease, prepare for rehab and possibly a discharge home after. This all came about--he was in luck. But even more than his amazing survival, he now had a primary care physician: Me. Since then we've worked hand-in-hand, and he is well on his way to recovery and substantial weight loss. I believe that he would have been a healthier man if he had PCP access prior and most likely could have avoided the prolonged hospitalization and ICU admission.

I also believe that with a universal system and single payer, it will be much easier to bill and track patient utility. I think that better physician participation in politics, donating more of our dollars to our medical societies, and education of young attendings and residents will result in the next generation of physicians being more involved with improving our healthcare system.

Thanks for joining Healthcare United and for being a part of this new generation of healthcare advocacy!
- Dr. Jack Braha, DO