Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

I once taught a mini-elective for upper elementary and middle school students on writing opinion pieces. We generated a list of what made a piece effective, and included that the piece should consider the opposing opinion and respond to what someone who disagrees might say. Then the kids went off to start composing. One student was writing about his support for gay marriage. He wrote, "Gay people should be allowed to get married. It's the right thing to do." I reminded him to respond to what someone who disagreed to him might say, so he added, "Anyone who disagrees with me is a moron."

The Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback thought of this yesterday when, after writing my piece about Tess Sosa's fight to get insurance coverage for her therapy following the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River, when I stumbled upon an entry at Plastic Surgery 101 on the same topic. In a post entitled "Exhibit A in Why We Will Never Be Able to Control Health Care Costs," Dr. Rob Oliver, Jr., a plastic surgeon in Alabama, writes:

You think Mrs. Sosa and other passengers would count their blessing to be alive and be thrilled with the $5000 check US Airways issued each passenger in compensation (which they didn't even an obligation to do). Apparently this was not acceptable to Mrs. Sosa who is demanding the airlines insurer, A.I.G., pay for all costs associated with her psychotherapy for post traumatic stress disorder, the unprovable sinkhole of psychiatric diagnoses.

Now, to be fair, Dr. Oliver and I are both guilty of not responding to the opposing point of view, although we did not go so far as to state the other is a moron (at least not yet!). So I would like to address what he has to say a little more fully.

PTSD is, indeed, unprovable. So is pretty much every psychiatric disorder. There is no blood test for schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder or PTSD. That doesn't mean they don't exist. And if I were Ms. Sosa and I was interested in going after AIG to milk whatever I could out of a deep pocket, don't you think I'd be going for cash? I can't imagine someone saying, "Gee, you know what I really want? Not a car, not a house, not financial security, no, what I want is some EMDR."

Dr. Oliver goes on to question why the insurer is liable at all, since this was an "act of God," (presuming, here, that the same supernatural force that produces earthquakes and lightning produces massive flocks of geese, which I think is fair). Without looking at the policy, it's hard to know whether this incident as a whole is covered. The standard, though, should be whether physical injuries to passengers would be covered. As I said yesterday, if a broken leg is covered, then psychotherapy should be covered. If a broken leg isn't covered, however, then of course neither should mental health care be covered. All I'm suggesting is that we have parity. I'm guessing we don't.

Trauma reactions are real, and in some cases they are really serious. Someone with untreated PTSD is a ticking time bomb, whether it's a vet who shoots in a crowd or a plane crash survivor who crashes her car into yours. Presuming it isn't real and that people are faking is a very good way to increase the death toll from traumatic events, via homicide or suicide.

Oh, and I just have to say. A plastic surgeon blaming a PTSD patient seeking treatment for the rise in healthcare costs because that treatment may be unnecessary? People who live in glass houses . . .