\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AdobeStock_393360407-768x432.jpeg\")
\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tEnough with the health care policy patchwork. It\u2019s time for universal insurance<\/a><\/p>\n The irony was sharp. In the resuscitation bay, I felt oddly at home for the first time in weeks \u2014 except now I was the parent of the child whose care I would normally direct, and I was powerless.<\/p>\n The infusion proceeded according to protocol. I reminded myself that I was her mother, not her doctor. Three hours later, when the team recognized the severity of the extravasation injury, professional awareness gave way to primal helplessness. I knew what could happen before it happened \u2014 and I couldn\u2019t stop it.<\/p>\n Before this experience, I was one of many American physicians who looked longingly at universal health care systems abroad<\/a>. As the U.S. grappled with growing political threats to science, public health, evidence-based medicine, and the health care safety net, I wondered whether the future of ethical medical practice lay elsewhere. Practicing in the U.S. also meant navigating a system shaped by litigation fears, consumer expectations, and business pressures that complicate clinical decision-making. From a distance, other systems appeared more humane, more rational \u2014 a refuge from our own frustrations.<\/p>\n Living and practicing medicine outside the United States complicated that belief.<\/p>\n In the days following Leela\u2019s injury, I waited for the part of the story I knew best from my professional life: acknowledgment, transparency, and learning. I have always believed the measure of a health care system is not whether harm occurs, but how it responds when it does. Errors are inevitable, even in excellent hospitals. I have made many. What matters is whether they become opportunities to learn or threats to manage.<\/p>\n That moment never came.<\/p>\n I repeatedly asked to speak with my daughter\u2019s medical team. They eventually apologized and said an adverse event review would be filed. At discharge, we were promised discussion and follow-up. We heard nothing.<\/p>\n When I filed a formal complaint, I hoped the silence reflected the overwhelmed, understaffed, and poorly coordinated system we encountered during our admission rather than avoidance. Leela suffered through emergent surgery, agonizing dressing changes, and faced a guarded prognosis for weeks. I provided clinical context and supporting literature and asked a simple question: What will you change so another child isn\u2019t injured like this?<\/p>\n A month later, the answer arrived: nothing.<\/p>\n I was told protocol had been followed, that phenytoin was within guidelines, that these things \u201csometimes happen.\u201d The injury \u2014 raw, oozing, angry \u2014 had turned our lives upside down, but it was rendered invisible in the institutional review. Not because the harm wasn\u2019t serious or preventable, but because the steps on the page had been followed. In the system\u2019s logic, nothing had gone wrong.<\/p>\n Something had gone wrong. Each moment held clues \u2014 pump alarms, repeated IV adjustments, uncertainty about whether she was still seizing, a tightly wrapped foot trembling as a vesicant infused. Each was an opportunity to ask whether safeguards were sufficient. I offered to be a partner in that learning. Silence followed.<\/p>\n Leela\u2019s injury demanded months of intensive care: twice-daily dressing changes, sedated imaging, repeated emergency visits, and consultations across specialties. Two skin grafts and three weeks in the hospital attached to a wound VAC device<\/a> were recommended to prevent severe infection. A multidisciplinary meeting was scheduled to discuss next steps. When we arrived, no clinicians came.<\/p>\n We returned to New York to seek care. Conservative, evidence-based management was recommended, and over eight months the wound slowly closed.<\/p>\n I believe deeply in universal health care. But universal care also must mean universal safety and accountability, not merely universal access.<\/p>\n My experience forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth: Average outcomes can obscure major differences in safety culture. The American system contains profound inequities, yet many settings maintain extraordinarily high standards of care shaped by privilege, geography, and institutional resources. These expectations \u2014 though costly and perhaps unsustainable \u2014 foster a culture of relentless scrutiny that is critical to patient safety across much of American medicine.<\/p>\n In the U.S. academic medical centers where I worked, problems were expected to be owned, questioned, and solved in a timely manner even when resources were strained \u2014 not quietly accepted. Harm was treated as data.<\/p>\n \t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AdobeStock_265724851-768x432.jpeg\")
\t\t<\/p>\n