A reader writes:
I wonder how many people picked up the contrast of the two multiple sclerosis stories from the nominees' wives. Ann Romney received the very best treatment available to put her condition in remission. Michelle Obama's father kept going to work and painfully climbing the stairs back to the apartment every day. This is the story of the two health care systems in America.
Another elaborates:
I have been waiting for someone in the Obama camp to take this on, and boy did Michelle do it beautifully. I have MS, so I've avidly tracked their references throughout this campaign and prior ones. Ann often references her own MS – how Mitt was going to install an elevator if the effects of her relapse proved long-lasting, how she horseback rides or does reflexology to help the MS, how she had to pause on the campaign trail because she was getting worn down and it aggravated her MS. Ann has a relatively mild form of relapsing remitting MS (as do I). It can be scary at times, and debilitating at times, but her experience is nothing like those who are secondary or primary progressive.
At the 2004 convention, Michelle noted that her father had MS, and occasionally she or her brother reference it, but last night she described his disability in vivid detail. You could see her father with his walker at the sink buttoning his uniform. His daily, basic efforts took a great deal of time and effort. It was yet another way of saying to the Romneys that your version of the world is yours, and good for you, but there are so many others out there who experience life in a harder way and please don't cover up or ignore the often brutal or truly challenging reality. We get it.
Ann Romney may never use her platform to point out that life can be really difficult for those disabled with MS, and horseback riding and reflexology is not something they can afford, nor would it help many of them. Nor will she note that the Affordable Care Act will help people with MS not be discriminated against based on their on pre-existing condition. It's a loss for all of those with MS and other diseases.
Update from a reader:
I'm a single-payer supporter, realistic enough to know the ACA was as good as we'd get, given the political circumstances, and who believes it will be an enormous improvement over the old system. I'm also a clinical neurologist, and while I despise just about everything Romney/Ryan stand for, particularly with regard to health care, it's not fair to compare Ann Romney to Michelle Obama's father with regard to MS. If Wikipedia is to be believed, he died in 1991, before the first of the powerful disease-modifying agents that presumably stabilized Ann Romney's disease had been approved by FDA. It doesn't seem fair to blame the discrepancy in their outcomes to income disparities. (I have always wondered if Mr. Robinson chose to work for the City of Chicago because public or very large corporate jobs have too often been the only way to have health insurance for people who have a condition, like MS, for which individual coverage was not available, prior to the ACA, at any price.)
Don't get me wrong – working in a public hospital, a good part of what I do is try to ameliorate, for patients who are un- or underinsured, the consequences of dealing with chronic neurologic disease. But comparisons should be apples to apples.
The Dish 