ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Treating emergencies isnt your insurance talking. Its doctoring. Its nursing. Its medical technology. Its your stone-filled gallbladder obstructing and a top surgeon operating on it without delay. You cant prove that a junior attending surgeon wouldnt do just as well, but you can feel it when the wound is healing so well two days later where the angry raw organ was scope-sucked successfully from your body.

The best of emergency health care is what we saw represented on the television screen last week, as top doctors came forward to describe their craft, a reminder that the health insurance future weve all been debating lacks real flesh on its bones. An insurance company cant manufacture or guarantee the dedication or skill of a Dr. Jack Sava, head of trauma at Medstar Washington Hospital Center, who directed the lifesaving interventions for House Majority Whip Steven Scalise.

Damaged blood vessels and pelvic organs torn asunder by the wide tracking fragments of a speeding bullet were meticulously repaired. The miracle medical crew managed to pour blood in faster than it was pouring out while managing to preserve essential blood flow to the brain. There will be a long rehab process ahead with pain management and infection control and more surgical repair. Top doctors and nurses will be needed throughout the healing process.

No one-size-fits-all health insurance can guarantee that the best surgical and rehab teams will always be available in lower-profile cases at less prominent trauma centers.

Also appearing at a televised press conference last week was the top team of doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who received patient and victim Otto Warmbier from North Korea. Dr. Daniel Kanter, medical director of the neuroscience intensive care unit revealed that poor Otto had suffered severe brain damage and was rendered unresponsive from apparent stoppage of breathing and cardiac arrest likely from a pill or poison hed been given and according to neurological testing not from botulism as the North Koreans had claimed. Warmbier sadly died a few days later.

Dr. Kanter and his group also might have made a difference if they werent tragically reduced to an after-the-fact Sherlock Holmesian analysis.

Viewers could look to the screen and wonder would I receive such top-flight treatment if it were me?

The answer for the time being, more often than not, is still yes. But will doctors of this quality continue to survive amid the constrictions of a government/insurance bureaucracy?

Many years ago I was travelling through Europe and met a middle-aged bearded man driving an old VW minivan. He told me that he was a well-known oncologist who was paid the equivalent of $60,000 a year (in the 1980s) to care for very sick patients. He openly admitted that the best thing about his job was the time off it afforded him to travel.

We dont need that sober reality here. Unfortunately, both the Affordable Care Act and the replacement American Health Care Act (being debated in the Senate) rely on an expanded insurance model that limit the role of doctors. We are already struggling with a growing shortage, excess computer documentation and a rising fear of malpractice as we work to master the latest technology. At least the new bill removes the mandate to buy a product that doesnt guarantee you access to our actual care. Thats the right place to start, but it isnt the whole answer.

There needs to be a new focus on rewarding doctors for the work we do and allowing us more freedom to do it. We need less so-called comprehensive insurance and more available and affordable health care tools to choose from.

Marc Siegel, a physician, is a clinical professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Medical Center. He is a Fox News medical correspondent.

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Supporting medicine and its finest practitioners - Washington Times