Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
Millions of Americans Who Work For Living Don't Have Medical Insurance
Aired July 19, 2002 - 09:39 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ARTHEL NEVILLE, CNN ANCHOR: Millions of Americans who work for a living don't have medical insurance, and for of them, every visit to the doctor's office becomes a major question of cost versus benefit.
Our Bill Delaney found one doctor who decided to do something about it, and went to her Vermont office for a checkup.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Simply Medicine, this is Dr. Grigg.
BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): And it is that simple.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, Phyllis.
DELANEY: The first-name basis, cash-only medical practice of Dr. Lisa Grigg, Wallingford, Vermont.
Two years ago, fed up with big-time medicine, she downsized, personalized, big time.
DR. LISA GRIGG, OSTEOPATHIC PHYSICIAN: Big medicine does not work. Big business is controlling big medicine, and business and medicine necessarily have different goals. And when your goal as a physician is to make a bottom line rather than take care of the patient, then you've compromised your professional ethics.
DELANEY: No appointments, no insurance: 7-year-old Tricia Burden woke up with an earache. Self-employed, uninsured Julie Burden: estimated care at a typical practice at $100. Ten minutes or so at Dr. Grigg's...
JULIE BURDEN, UNINSURED MOTHER: With medicine, $28, so -- and you can't do that anywhere else.
DELANEY: With a Radio Shack digital timer, visits are clocked.
I decided to have her look at my bad left knee. I've been trying to get that thing looked at in Boston.
(on camera): This last week, I called for an appointment, couldn't get one until earl September. I walked in Dr. Grigg's office, and I'm getting the most thorough look at this knee that I've had in the year and a half of problems with it.
(voice-over): Fifteen minutes, 40 minutes of Dr. Grigg's time, and she figured out the problem, recommended a way to tape up, and some medicine.
(on camera): Dr. Grigg's dream is to create what she calls a safety net, a network of doctors who share her approach and ideals. But there is a cost to all this. Since she started simply medicine, her income has gotten more basic, too: down about 80 percent.
(voice-over): To keep going, she's applying for tax-exempt status.
GRIGG: We'd like to expand our ability to take care of people with no money and no insurance.
DELANEY: Why is that a goal?
GRIGG: Because I'm an idealist. The only solution I found out to being a burned-out physician is to turn around and embrace your ideals.
DELANEY: In the ever more impersonal, impossibly expensive world of American medicine, a little oasis of change, where you sometimes even leave with change.
Bill Delaney, CNN, Wallingford, Vermont.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
