SICKO IS MUCKRAKING AT ITS BEST
A century ago journalists and critics who exposed filthy slaughter houses [Upton Sinclair], corruption in municipal governments [Lincoln Steffens], and monopolies in restraint of trade [Teddy Roosevelt] were called muckrakers. The privileged and the powerful despised them and smeared them as unpatriotic. Because of them some terrible abuses were regulated by our Federal government. Nedra and I saw Michael Moore’s Sicko and it was both funny, as good satire can be when skillfully done, and sad because of the personal stories of patients dumped from one hospital to another by being shoved out of taxis to transport them, middle class people brought to bankruptcy because their medical insurance did not cover their needs, or insurance workers who quit because they couldn’t take denying insurance to clients who were sick. There were doctors frustrated by insurance companies that did not pay them and insurance companies that would not allow them to recommend tests or treatment they felt were essential for their patients.
In 2001 after the 9-11 attack we were on board ship in the Pacific Ocean where I was teaching on Semester at Sea. The State Department took over our voyage, fearful that some 600 college students from 100 colleges (most of them from wealthy or upper middle class families) might be at risk. All our Islamic ports were cancelled and we did not know until a day ahead where our next port would be. One of the safe ports we were allowed by the State Department (Bush administration, no less) to visit was Havana. Castro threw a banquet for the entire shipboard community and gave a four hour lecture on terrorism (hotel fires and bombings by anti-Castro terrorists from Florida, he claimed, which are rarely reported in the US press). I was interested in health care in Cuba and got to see their neighborhood health units (one on every block), their secondary health (one within walking distance for every neighborhood), and their tertiary care (where major surgery, referred rare conditions, and trauma were handled). While it was clear to me that Cuba was a controlled state I would not choose to live in, the health care delivery was available to everyone. One reason Cuba has the lowest infant mortality and one of highest longevity rates in our hemisphere is that everyone has to visit a physician once a year. If not, the local doctor knocks on your door and does a house call.
In Moore’s Sicko we learn what local citizens and ex-patriate Americans think of free health care in Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. They love it and so do their physicians because they can treat people without worrying about HMO approvals, the red-tape of insurance companies, and the horror of seeing their patients forced from their care by hospital policy set by profit-making corporations. Moore argues for a government that values “We, the People,” rather than “Me, the lucky.” We don’t argue that police should be paid out of private funds and those who can’t afford it should not be protected. We tolerate a shameful health system that has been bloated in costs to the benefit of a few and the detriment of an unacceptable portion of our fellow citizens. Note with sadness that virtually every candidate, Republican and Democratic, running for President, has been given generous donations by lobbyists from the few who represent the privileged who wish it to remain that way.
Showing posts with label Health care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health care. Show all posts
Friday, November 26, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Life Lines 27
EVOLVING VIEWS OF HEALTH CARE
Until the early 1600s health care in Great Britain was primarily a family or church matter. If the poor could not afford their care, the Church provided the hospitals for their care. That ended because Henry VIII divorced his wife; he was excommunicated; and Henry dumped the Church and set up his own Anglican Church. He abolished the old Church’s activities and made Poor Laws replace the charity of the church. Health was secularized. Taxes were raised to provide the poor with help if widowed, sick, orphaned, or unemployed. As the Industrial Revolution began, cities increased in population and this led to social changes, including increased crime, poverty, and people unable to earn their own living. Private charity could not keep up with the needs and a tension developed between extending poor laws and cutting back taxes to support them. That tension still exists today because the problems of living guarantee some people will be born with genetic infirmities, others will have accidents or diseases rendering them disabled, others will develop psychoses, and some will be born with much reduced mental capacity for most employments. For some good luck prevails. They are born normal and healthy in normal and healthy families and have never experienced serious disease or financial troubles. For others bad luck prevails and generations of people live in poverty and cannot climb out of it, especially if they are looked upon as innately degenerate, unfit to reproduce, or depraved. Most of humanity has setbacks along the way and for this reason insurance of all sorts has prevailed since the industrial revolution began. It is a way to spread risks. We willingly do so for our homes, our cars, and even our lives.
The cost of health has changed dramatically in my own life. When my first child was born in 1957 it cost me $200 and my salary, as a graduate student, was $1000 a year. A few years later I was a full time teacher in Canada and my next child was free. We were also given a monthly stipend just for having a child! A few years later we were at UCLA and the rest of our children were born. I was covered by the University’s health insurance plan and while it was now about $1000 per birth, I had to pay a deductible of $200 for each birth. I thought to myself that health insurance was a way of inflating health costs without actually reducing them below the costs before there was health insurance. Today I have a mixture of health plans. Medicare is great. I have the physicians I admire, I can go to the hospitals they are associated with, and it costs me very little from my social security to pay for it. My dental insurance is worthless. I used to get checks for one dollar back for routine treatment and not much more for more serious work like root canals (I later signed up for much reduced costs by having some of those root canals done at the University clinic and I got some free periodontal care by volunteering as a human guinea pig for new treatments). Hearing aids and eyeglasses? Except for a modest reduction from a union benefit plan, forget about it. For this reason I am much more sympathetic to government run plans. I agreed with Michael Moore’s analysis in Sicko. I agreed with Senator Edward Kennedy’s plan, which included a choice for government subsidized public health care. I don’t for a minute believe in the scare stories about “socialized medicine.” I am far more scared by stories about corporate lobbying, fake grassroots movements, and outright deception by advertising groups hired by health corporations seeking to preserve their privileges and profits.
Until the early 1600s health care in Great Britain was primarily a family or church matter. If the poor could not afford their care, the Church provided the hospitals for their care. That ended because Henry VIII divorced his wife; he was excommunicated; and Henry dumped the Church and set up his own Anglican Church. He abolished the old Church’s activities and made Poor Laws replace the charity of the church. Health was secularized. Taxes were raised to provide the poor with help if widowed, sick, orphaned, or unemployed. As the Industrial Revolution began, cities increased in population and this led to social changes, including increased crime, poverty, and people unable to earn their own living. Private charity could not keep up with the needs and a tension developed between extending poor laws and cutting back taxes to support them. That tension still exists today because the problems of living guarantee some people will be born with genetic infirmities, others will have accidents or diseases rendering them disabled, others will develop psychoses, and some will be born with much reduced mental capacity for most employments. For some good luck prevails. They are born normal and healthy in normal and healthy families and have never experienced serious disease or financial troubles. For others bad luck prevails and generations of people live in poverty and cannot climb out of it, especially if they are looked upon as innately degenerate, unfit to reproduce, or depraved. Most of humanity has setbacks along the way and for this reason insurance of all sorts has prevailed since the industrial revolution began. It is a way to spread risks. We willingly do so for our homes, our cars, and even our lives.
The cost of health has changed dramatically in my own life. When my first child was born in 1957 it cost me $200 and my salary, as a graduate student, was $1000 a year. A few years later I was a full time teacher in Canada and my next child was free. We were also given a monthly stipend just for having a child! A few years later we were at UCLA and the rest of our children were born. I was covered by the University’s health insurance plan and while it was now about $1000 per birth, I had to pay a deductible of $200 for each birth. I thought to myself that health insurance was a way of inflating health costs without actually reducing them below the costs before there was health insurance. Today I have a mixture of health plans. Medicare is great. I have the physicians I admire, I can go to the hospitals they are associated with, and it costs me very little from my social security to pay for it. My dental insurance is worthless. I used to get checks for one dollar back for routine treatment and not much more for more serious work like root canals (I later signed up for much reduced costs by having some of those root canals done at the University clinic and I got some free periodontal care by volunteering as a human guinea pig for new treatments). Hearing aids and eyeglasses? Except for a modest reduction from a union benefit plan, forget about it. For this reason I am much more sympathetic to government run plans. I agreed with Michael Moore’s analysis in Sicko. I agreed with Senator Edward Kennedy’s plan, which included a choice for government subsidized public health care. I don’t for a minute believe in the scare stories about “socialized medicine.” I am far more scared by stories about corporate lobbying, fake grassroots movements, and outright deception by advertising groups hired by health corporations seeking to preserve their privileges and profits.
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