Every election cycle, the wellbeing of millions of Americans becomes a political football casually tossed around by members of Congress without any sincere intentions of making a definite improvement to the system. To them, the issue is trivial, foreign and esoteric. But to America's most defenseless citizens, the needy, and the underprivileged, the problem is unrelenting, pressing and exhausting. These people suffer in silence as the ravages of disease destroy their well-being and drain their vitality.

From an early age, I was conscious of the pernicious consequences of inadequate health coverage. In 2005, while in high school, the only hospital in my town closed. And as time passed, I saw my neighbors with hypertension develop kidney failure prematurely and go on dialysis, while others with heart failure developed activity limiting dyspnea because of minimal-to-zero follow-up. This experience showed me that poverty and substandard medical care combine to create lasting health disparities that plague communities for generations. Indeed, neighborhoods with subpar medical infrastructures invariably become areas of an enduring cycle of poverty, violence, and neglect. …show more content…
Predictably, I encountered patients with severe complications of common medical conditions. During these interactions, I commiserated with the unfortunate circumstances where patients are consigned to living with chronic, disfiguring, nonhealing lower extremity ulcers for decades because they can't afford to see a doctor. These encounters lingered in my mind and was instrumental in shaping my career