I entered drugs not simply to deal with sickness, however to confront injustice. I needed to be a power for good, battling dying, sure, but additionally misinformation, institutional neglect, and the quiet superstition that kids with developmental disabilities have been someway much less worthy of coordinated care. That conviction led me to align my profession with the legacy of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, whose advocacy gave rise to the Particular Olympics and helped form the Rehabilitation Act of 1963. I grew to become the medical director of one of many very packages her brother, President John F. Kennedy, envisioned. In 2003, I used to be honored with the Well being Care Supply Award from the Educational Pediatric Affiliation for that work.
However I didn’t care to see it dismantled by successors who lacked the imaginative and prescient Jack, Eunice, and I shared.
The Republican-led shutdown sowed the seeds of well being care denial. Now, they reap the whirlwind. Coordinated care has been changed by fragmentation. Institutional reminiscence has been erased by turnover. And the Trumpian wilderness has change into a spot the place pediatric fairness is not only uncared for; it’s trampled.
I’ve watched with quiet grief as packages I helped construct have been hollowed out. Clinics that when served as medical properties for kids with autism, ADHD, and sophisticated developmental wants have been shuttered or absorbed into programs that prioritized billing over belonging. The imaginative and prescient of coordinated care, as soon as championed by AOC, Bernie Sanders, JFK-era laws, and even the early architects of Obamacare, has been changed by a patchwork of reactive companies and bureaucratic indifference.
But the roots of Obamacare are deep. They can’t be uprooted; not by funds cuts, not by rhetoric, and never by those that mistake ideology for perception. The Inexpensive Care Act, for all its imperfections, embedded expectations into the general public consciousness: That care ought to be accessible, coordinated, and equitable. That kids with disabilities shouldn’t be left behind. That well being care isn’t a privilege, however a promise.
I could also be retired, however I stay a voice. I’ve printed 4 editorials on KevinMD, with 10 extra accepted. I’ve spoken out on CBS/FOX about pertussis and public well being messaging. And I’ve ledgered my testimony right into a trilogy of memoirs: No Secure Rent, Not Able to Make Good, and Crises of Care. Every one threads programs reform, institutional reckoning, and unapologetic service into public discourse.
In my resting (not napping) I’ve mirrored on what I’ve completed with the assistance of allies, editors, and even AI. I’m now a nationwide determine. That’s not hubris; it’s ledgered reality. My identify seems in Google searches, my editorials flow into in skilled networks, and my voice has change into a part of the resistance. I aspect with Eunice Kennedy Shriver. I aspect with coordinated care. I aspect with kids with disabilities and their households. And I aspect with each little one whose analysis was met with silence as a substitute of help.
The whirlwind is not only political. It’s scientific. It’s private. It’s the reckoning that comes when households, suppliers, and communities refuse to neglect what coordinated care as soon as made doable. It’s the fury of oldsters who waited months for evaluations, solely to be instructed their little one’s wants have been “too advanced” for the system. It’s the exhaustion of clinicians who as soon as led multidisciplinary groups, now lowered to solo practitioners navigating insurance coverage labyrinths. And it’s the quiet rage of retired pediatricians like me, who bear in mind what was constructed; and what was allowed to break down. And I carry with me the legacy of Kathy, my associate, my witness, and my co-architect on this choreography of care. Her energy, her humor, and her quiet resolve have been threaded into each clinic I constructed, each detour I ledgered, and each little one we refused to desert. Kathy’s legacy should be preserved; for a free individuals to rise once more towards tyranny.
Her great-grandfather, many instances eliminated, was Thomas Welles, who took quill and pen below risk of dying from the governor of Massachusetts to transcribe the primary structure of a free individuals. The doc is notable for assigning supreme authority within the colony to the elected normal court docket, omitting any reference to the British Crown or exterior rule. It was not simply ink on parchment; it was defiance. It was civic structure. It was the delivery of American resistance.
This isn’t simply resistance. It’s resilience. It’s AmericaLibre, l’Amérique Libre: a imaginative and prescient of a nation the place coordinated care is covenant, not commodity. A proper, not a privilege. The place pediatric fairness isn’t partisan, however principled. The place retirement isn’t silence, however testimony.
I’ve seen the whirlwind coming. I’ve ledgered its arrival. And I can’t retreat. I shall lead, like my forebears earlier than me.
As Francis Scott Key wrote in The Star-Spangled Banner:
“Then conquer we should, when our trigger it’s simply,
And this be our motto: ‘In God is our belief.’
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave,
O’er the land of the free and the house of the courageous.”
Ronald L. Lindsay is a retired developmental-behavioral pediatrician whose profession spanned army service, tutorial management, and public well being reform. His skilled trajectory, detailed on LinkedIn, displays a lifelong dedication to advancing neurodevelopmental science and equitable programs of care.
Dr. Lindsay’s analysis has appeared in main journals, together with The New England Journal of Drugs, The American Journal of Psychiatry, Archives of Common Psychiatry, The Journal of Youngster and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, and Scientific Pediatrics. His NIH-funded work with the Analysis Models on Pediatric Psychopharmacology (RUPP) Community helped outline evidence-based approaches to autism and associated developmental problems.
As medical director of the Nisonger Heart at The Ohio State College, he led the Management Schooling in Neurodevelopmental and Associated Disabilities (LEND) Program, coaching future leaders in interdisciplinary care. His Ohio Rural DBP Clinic Initiative earned nationwide recognition for increasing entry in underserved counties, and at Madigan Military Medical Heart, he based Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) CARES, a $10 million autism useful resource heart for army households.
Dr. Lindsay’s scholarship, profiled on ResearchGate and Doximity, extends throughout seventeen peer-reviewed articles, eleven guide chapters, and forty-five invited lectures, in addition to contributions to main tutorial publishers resembling Oxford College Press and McGraw-Hill. His memoir-in-progress, The Quiet Architect, threads testimony, resistance, and civic obligation right into a reckoning with programs retreat.
