Spirituality & Adversity with a Healthcare Emphasis: I
Sometimes life tests us severely. In fact it cracks or prematurely kills off many of us.
Some of this pressure is unavoidable. Much more of it is caused or compounded by the actions and the failure to act on the part of human beings. Our troubles are largely of our own making.
I’m letting the poem below, which takes off from recent events in the news, serve as a brief introduction to a series of posts on the trouble the human race causes itself – with a particular emphasis on the evaporation of care from American healthcare-inc. over recent decades.
Consider it an open thread. Feel free to comment on the state of health care in the US, another country, or on a personal experience in this area. Feel equally free to comment on other topics that the poem points to or suggests for you, or on the poem itself.
Upcoming posts will have a tighter focus on health care.
Lazy Days
A child’s maimed playing with a cluster bomb;
An old man’s found face down in the dirt;
A woman hands her daughter
Some contaminated water
Because it’s all there is to drink;
A buried miner’s cursing goes unheard.
Hearts die every day, betrayed and hardened.
Around the world, the way
That many take is clear: greed pays.
Some live in luxury;
They feel the need and have the means;
Some die in poverty –
Most with needs no less luxuriant
But lacking the financial ease.
Our youth, uneducated,
Kill each other in the blighted streets
Where the privileged will never stray
And safely can ignore – much like the elderly,
The housebound, and the bedridden,
Making do with every desultory scrap
That market-driven healthcare
Decides it can afford.
Still, the planet we’ve inherited
Orbits promising long ages,
Favored by a star that’s near enough
But not too far. The river currents and the air
Stray only where we’ve built the dams
And damned the wind; safe to say,
Our grief has not been caused
By fields or leaves, by elephants or trees
Or massive failure of the moon and tides.
The Bible says God made us in his image
Then rested on the seventh day.
God meant his sketch to show us working;
We’ve fleshed it out to paint ourselves
The image of a god on holiday.
- Paul Maurice Martin
Some of this pressure is unavoidable. Much more of it is caused or compounded by the actions and the failure to act on the part of human beings. Our troubles are largely of our own making.
I’m letting the poem below, which takes off from recent events in the news, serve as a brief introduction to a series of posts on the trouble the human race causes itself – with a particular emphasis on the evaporation of care from American healthcare-inc. over recent decades.
Consider it an open thread. Feel free to comment on the state of health care in the US, another country, or on a personal experience in this area. Feel equally free to comment on other topics that the poem points to or suggests for you, or on the poem itself.
Upcoming posts will have a tighter focus on health care.
Lazy Days
A child’s maimed playing with a cluster bomb;
An old man’s found face down in the dirt;
A woman hands her daughter
Some contaminated water
Because it’s all there is to drink;
A buried miner’s cursing goes unheard.
Hearts die every day, betrayed and hardened.
Around the world, the way
That many take is clear: greed pays.
Some live in luxury;
They feel the need and have the means;
Some die in poverty –
Most with needs no less luxuriant
But lacking the financial ease.
Our youth, uneducated,
Kill each other in the blighted streets
Where the privileged will never stray
And safely can ignore – much like the elderly,
The housebound, and the bedridden,
Making do with every desultory scrap
That market-driven healthcare
Decides it can afford.
Still, the planet we’ve inherited
Orbits promising long ages,
Favored by a star that’s near enough
But not too far. The river currents and the air
Stray only where we’ve built the dams
And damned the wind; safe to say,
Our grief has not been caused
By fields or leaves, by elephants or trees
Or massive failure of the moon and tides.
The Bible says God made us in his image
Then rested on the seventh day.
God meant his sketch to show us working;
We’ve fleshed it out to paint ourselves
The image of a god on holiday.
- Paul Maurice Martin
Posted by Paul at 4:23 PM Permalink
41 Comments:
I do have health care and am grateful that I have it but I don't think it is a God given right.
For millennia people lacked many rights – to education, protection from child labor, freedom from slavery, indentured servitude, the right to a fair trial, the right to life itself – rights that many people in the world, but far from all, can take for granted today. If our rights are God given, it’s pretty clear that we’re the ones through whose hands they come or by whose hands they are taken away.
Health care isn’t a luxury. It’s often the difference between life and death; physical well being and decrepitude.
The American Cancer Society just overhauled its entire ad campaign to highlight that the leading cause of cancer death today is inadequate or non existent health insurance. And it’s just one example of how what we’ve got isn’t working.
To my mind it speaks badly of the current state of the richest nation on earth. I love our land, our people, I love what America has stood for historically – not this. I don’t know what made the phrase “universal health care” something like a dirty word. Like we can’t afford it when the rest of the industrialized world can.
I’m sure it’s an achievable goal. Millions of American men, women, and children without access to health care doesn’t even make sense economically. An ounce of prevention is way less expensive than a pound of cure.
It might well take the form, as you suggest, of a combination of government and business – I’m no expert and it would be interesting if anyone has specific ideas here…
N2: And it looks to me as though on a number of fronts, the general direction of the shifting of the burden that you mention is to the future - our own children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Leadership in a lot of areas these days reminds me of somebody first learning to drive and looking only at the road directly in front of the car instead of further up the highway.
Many also struggle with the idea that if they become spiritual persons, seeking enlightenment, that suddenly all will be well and good fortune, good health, and love will flow to them like a Niagara Falls. WRONG. Being a spiritual person, a seeker after truth does not guarantee anything in and of this world. It does allow for reduced worry in that one begins to accept that the All will provide the necessities for the earthly self. Often it is truly only the bare necessities, but it does let one know they are on a positive path. Even the bare necessities must be earned by being the very best person one can be and always willing to do what one sees as helping one's fellow man.
Here I am spouting off again!
I don't know why we don't have socilized medicine here in the US but I suspect it's all about money. I've seen that places like Brazil offer free health care to all and they have cut down on the rise of AIDs in that way. Both Brazil and India have recently decided to use generic AIDs drugs (break patents) because they can't afford the price American drug companies charge ..... good for them.
I’ve noticed the same thing, especially in some heath and wellness/holistic healing circles. It’s nonsensical. For thirty seven years I had normal health; I would have thought so then too.
I did a series of posts on how patently false this notion is some months back. It’s essentially a contemporary-sounding spin on a rudimentary, truly childish theodicy (explanation of the existence of good and evil): bad things happen to those who deserve them while goodness is rewarded.
How people can maintain this in the face of, say, opening a newspaper any day of the week would baffle me except that I think I may understand the motive, which I can see could be powerful enough to potentially compromise a clear and honest look at life. Speaking of clear and honest perspectives…
KATHY: I wish Al Gore had come along when scientists first started pointing to the likelihood of global warming, what – twenty five years ago? The logic of energy industry spokespersons at that time – I remember seeing interviews on the Sunday news shows – always boiled down to the same thing: “As long as we can’t absolutely prove we’re doing long-term damage to the environment, let’s keep doing what we’re doing just in case we’re not.” Kind of like the tobacco industry.
All very exacting and demanding and even inspirational, really, to see these industry heavyweights, no less than scientists in their own right, demanding the highest standards of proof for reasons of absolute intellectual integrity. Similarly, today’s pharmaceuticals industry has gotten into the habit of rushing drugs to market before they’ve been adequately tested from out of a zealous concern for our well being. Did I say scientists? I should have said saints, not scientists – well, both, really. I’m at a loss for words. Maybe a brief motto will do:
“Always trust big business and the government that has come to do its bidding.”
ENEMY OF THE R: Thanks for stopping by –
CRYSTAL: Essentially, me too, and thanks for those examples. It’s hard for me to think of anything more basic than health or what sort of social contract between a government and its people would exclude part of the population from what the society has to offer by way of health care.
I ve seen it going down the pan. This region is in huge debt and the service has been cut
dramatically. Especially community
and rehabilitation
services which can prevent hospital admissions, and improve quality of life for a great number of people. But does the government value quality of life?
The service could be a lot more efficient than it is but Iwon't rant on because it's all relative, with vast numbers of people not even getting the most basic healthcare, where do we start?
I'm not a socialist or a communist
but
I do think the health service should be paid for through taxes and be free for everyone who needs it, Why not?
I don’t understand the problem either – except that in the US, corporate interests are far too powerful to look at that option. The way it works here is sicko, so to speak: the higher at risk for illness or the sicker that you are, the more difficult or impossible you find it to obtain coverage – or coverage for the illness that you actually happen to have, as per our insurance industry’s wise and compassionate “preexisting condition” exclusion. Lose your job/insurance and get a new job with new insurance – and you’re excluded from coverage for any disease you already have!
Here we have a system resembling car insurance: the sicker or the higher risk you are for illness, the harder it is to get coverage/the higher your premium. Makes sense with car insurance – discourages bad driving. But taking this approach to health somehow hasn't discouraged the coming of old age and its infirmities, accidents, genetic diseases, etc. etc. It hasn't even discouraged that percent of illness made more likely by poor lifestyle choices.
I don’t know if it’s been radio talk shows, the age of the “sound bite”… but something has resulted in substituting successful mislabeling for actual thought on any number of issues in a way that happens to serve the interests of big business and the administration. Sounds like maybe something similar could be happening in the UK.
Your example’s a good one: to be willing even to consider something as basic as health care getting paid for by taxes or even being well-regulated, let alone actually administered, by the government – after business, left for decades to its own devices, has patently demonstrated itself incapable of keeping the profit motive in perspective on an issue as vital as the public’s health – and you are indeed at risk of being painted a “socialist” or “communist.”
The cuts to your NHS remind me of how Medicare has been progressively gutted/under funded in recent years.
NASRA, thank you for recalling your personal experience here. Terrible misfortune, for those with the option of not having to live with it themselves, is both good to forget in some measure and well to bear in mind to some degree. That is, dwelling on misfortunes and sweeping them under the rug each diminish our ability to speak out or act when we have the chance.
In Hotel California the Eagles sing: “Some dance to remember; some dance to forget.” I think the best dancers dance in the present while in the back of their minds remembering never to forget.
This is not true. At least it is not true in Illinois, and I doubt that Illinois is unique in that way. If you take a job that comes with the opportunity to participate in a group health plan, you can not by Illinois law be excluded from coverage for any disease you already have. The insurance company involved has to accept you. Where the problem occurs is when you try to buy health insurance on your own that is not group health and you have a pre-existing condition.
It appears to me that we have excellent health care in this country. My husband has several health problems and he receives excellent care. People from other countries that have government funded health care plans often come here for treatment when they can't get it in their own country and need it.
It sounds like you are laying the blame for our health care problems at the feet of the health insurance industry as if it is due to their greed for profit. What is it that you think the health insurance companies are doing wrong? Why do you think government could do a better job?
We all want to get these health care problems solved. We just disagree about the best way to solve them. I tend to agree with Lucy regarding a consumer driven approach to keep health costs down. I want a safety net in place for people such as yourself who can't get insurance, but I am opposed to handing our entire health care system over to the government.
When I left my job to seek employment in another school district out of state in declining health - which, incidentlly, I was forced to do after my health insurance refused to pay for coverage, over the objections of my doctors, for the one perfectly standard and ordinary medical treatment that had been helpful to my condition - I fortunately found out through my own intensive efforts about some paperwork that I could fill out to get around the preexisting condition clause at my new employer's insurance. Nobody at the insurance companies told me about it.
The problem is that our present system works fine for some individuals in some situations and terribly for others. People with chronic or long-term progressive conditions that prove difficult to treat or even diagnose, for example, aren't among the industry's favorites. I'm literally not worth the time, trouble and expense to them. Sustained, coordinated efforts across specialty lines to diagnose and treat my condition just don't make good market sense. And they haven't happened.
And of course millions have no insurance at all. See my other site hmoappeals.com for more problems with health insurance.
To me, the industry, through many years, has demonstrated its need for tighter regulation. It might well be that the solution would involve a combination of government oversight and private industry. But as things stand, the industry heavily influences the government that's supposed to regulate it. More on that to come.
Technically, of course, we have top notch health care - when we can get it, which is the problem.
HAZZBUZZ: Same in the US. I think much of the public has gotten pretty bored over the years with our "HMO horror stories" and lulled into complacency by the insurance industry's repeated assertions that these are great rarities that they gladly rectify when they become aware of them.
In my case, my doctor, who was literally one of the world's leading authorities on the disease I was then thought to have, was overruled by a doctor/beaurocrat at my health insurance. Somebody who never met me made the decision to deny care, forcing me to move out of state for an all-out job hunt in declining health because that same insurance covered all the school districts in my area.
The couple that spoke before me lost their four year old son because their insurance stalled so long on the medication their doctor was trying to prescribe that it was too late by the time they got it.
CRYSTAL: Hadn't thought of putting it that way - those parallels make sense to me. The goverment also funds the military pretty heavily, whose purpose is also supposed to be to protect American citizens from physical danger. I don't know what functions are more basic than those relating to this.
Why can't we use, with some tweaking, what already exists in these insurance pools to get insurance coverage to people like you?
One thing about insurance that many people don't understand is that it is about future risk. You buy insurance to cover you against something that might happen in the future. You don't buy insurance to pay for something that has already happened. I know that health care is a bit different, but let me continue. For instance, you don't buy homeowners' insurance after your house has suffered some damage with the expectation that the insurance company is going to pay for the repairs. Sometimes people try to get away with that and this is why insurance agents do an inspection of the property and make note of any previous damage. Previous damage to the property is not covered. So, I think we need to try to understand what insurance is about. Am I wrong?
About what Hazzbuzz said last, this is why PPO's are better than HMO's.
Re: Health Care. Meh, "Universal Health Care" is NOT the answer, Socialized Health Care is NOT the answer. Fiscal responsibility from the Health professionals would go a long way toward an answer, as would a stopping of all the frivolous and capricious malpractice lawsuits. Do I have the answer? No. But that doesn't preclude one from seeing a bad idea as a bad idea.
Just my $0.02
It seems to me that what you say about the need to be foresighted is true and is a strong argument for universal health care of one kind or another.
PPOs are a little better than HMOs. But if you require major expertise because what you’ve got is very serious or rare, you better hope that the specialist you’ve researched who could do you the most good happens to practice in your geographical area and is on the preferred provider list…
RIMSHOT: That's the ironic point I was making when I followed up the line you cite with: “In fact it cracks or prematurely kills off many of us.”
From what I understand, as insurance premiums have been rising, malpractice suits have actually been dropping. The notion that frivolous malpractice suits are a significant factor driving up health care costs is one of a number of falsehoods that the insurance industry has presented to the public for years to preserve the status quo.
Universal health care is a complex issue and there’s a lot of debate around it. It just means everyone is covered. There are different ways that this could be approached.
Your statement that universal health care isn't the answer is an unsupported assertion. That health care as we have it today isn’t working for vast numbers of Americans is a fact.
I'm pretty certain that ALL my assertions in my previous post were unsupported as I thought I'd made it clear that those assertions were my opinions and, as such, did not require support.
Were Universal Health Care possible in a vacuum, then it might come a bit closer to being reasonable, but since it is a matter that overlaps with so many other issues (illegal immigration, high risk careers, corruption) it has no legs in a practical application.
Again, just my opinion
I think greed is the reason we don't have universal health care. It can't be that weird of a solution ... we're one of the few industrialized countries in the west that doesn't have it.
I like a plan that I heard on an episode of The West Wing to solve the health care problem ....
[...] just delete the phrase 'over 65' from the Medicare statute ..... Private insurance companies, they spend about 25% of your money on administrative costs, on paperwork. Do you know how much, anyone want to guess, how much Medicare administrative costs. You would think that it would be higher than the private companies, right? A massive, government bureaucracy can't be more efficient than the private companies, right? The Republicans have been telling you that forever. Two. That's right, 2%. Medicare's administrative costs are 2%, that's 23% lower than private insurance companies and HMOs. The best kept secret in the world in our country is that Medicare is the most efficient health care system in the world.
I myself have medicare because I'm disabled .... I have to pay about $100 a month, and up to 20% of some things I have done, but it's basically a good program and I feel lucky to have it.
The power of big business needs to be balanced fully as much as any other power. I don’t think the founding fathers could have imagined the power of today’s big business, yet I find their balance of power concept entirely realistic and appropriate to today’s world. You can’t allow tremendous, unchallengeable power to accrue to the hands of a small group of people – any group of people, whether business, religious, governmental or any other group of humans – and simply trust them to behave like a good Daddy to the rest of us. This is supposed to be a democracy, not an oligarchy…
RIMSHOT, I appreciate your being frank about that - but don’t you want your opinions to be based on information?? For example, regarding Medicare:
What I know for sure about that program, which is for retired and disabled people, is that it’s seriously under funded, it’s a staple of care for the working/middle class of those two populations, and that the under funding means we’re unprepared for the legions of baby boomers who’ll be retiring in the near future.
I’m also aware that Medicare has been gutted over the years – that it provides fewer and fewer services. And my own admittedly narrow experience of Medicare indicates that the services it still provides are woefully substandard in at least one area: the home health aides for which it provides coverage. I could do a whole post on our for-profit home health aide agencies and how the ones that take Medicare are, to borrow from the words of a great orator, “the worst of the worst.”
As far as your statement about millions opting out of Medicare goes, the only thing that comes to mind is how lots of people who have insurance from their work when they retire stay on that for their prescription coverage because it’s way better than what Medicare offers. That’s how it is for me. I still have Medicare, but I’m glad to have a better plan from my work and I use that one for prescriptions. Incidentally, because of ever rising insurance premiums, many employers are looking at eliminating the benefit of providing continued health coverage for their retirees – I’ve received two letters from my former employer letting me know that this may be in the works.
The fact that the government currently mismanages Medicare doesn’t prove that this is the best it can do so we ought to keep government out of helping to administer or at least seriously regulating health care. What it shows is that health insurance is something that’s now a low priority for a government that’s in bed with the insurance industry and would like to turn things over to the industry even more than it already has. And we can all see how well that’s working…
I don’t follow your “universal health care only works in a vacuum” theory. It’s already working in the rest of the developed world where it takes different forms. Some countries include privatization in varying degrees; some don’t.
Again, universal health care just means covering the population as a whole. There are different ways to go about it.
CRYSTAL: Hope people will take a look at your comment. For decades, the insurance industry has been generating misinformation to scare the public into thinking that this is the best we can do. You’ve succinctly pointed out how absurd this notion is and given an example of misinformation that I hadn’t specifically heard, but that certainly adds up in light of the well known fact that today doctors’ offices are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of paperwork our insurance companies require them to complete.
DON I: Glad you caught this one – thought you might like the poem. And glad you’ve been thinking about this issue. A significant aspect of the inestimable harm that Bush’s “preemptive” war has caused is its distraction of Congress and the nation as a whole from focusing on serious and rapidly mounting problems like health care and the environment.
I think what bothers me the most about the US healthcare system is that there is such a wide gap between the haves and have-nots. If one has good health coverage, or for some reason has not needed to avail oneself of healthcare...then it is easy to think that there is nothing wrong with the system, and thus the resistance to change.
I do have the added insight of having lived under the NHS and know that socialized, universal healthcare is not without its negatives.
Indeed, I had to come back to the US to get a dx for my condition. And it wasn't at any cozy doctor's office but in the indigent clinic at Grady Memorial in Atlanta. Because I was one of the have-nots.
But it was awfully good while I was in the U.K. when I had to have my rings sawed off my fingers that I didn't have to consider whether or not to do this based on economic hardship. If I had been here at that age, I might have just not done it and lost the use of my hands because I couldn't afford the ER bill.
I think people believe that if we had universal coverage that it would mean the end of private coverage. I don't see that being the case at all. Those who can afford private insurance will always be able to have it.
It just seems shameful that here we are, one of the wealthiest countries in the world with the highest infant mortality rate of any of the 1st world countries. There is just something intrinsically wrong that we, as a nation, have so many people who have to make decisions based on their finances as to whether or not to seek life saving, chronic or palliative care.
I don't think healthcare is a God-given right. But we have that little phrase in our Declaration of Independence about Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Seems like healthcare ought to be covered somewhere in that. Doesn't it?
A similar stat I ran across is that the US ranks… I forget if it’s just above or just below Cuba in the overall access of citizens to health care.
As you point out, different systems have their plusses and minuses. The thing is, like you, I’m certain that the phrase “universal health care” doesn’t require signing on to socialist or communist ideology – this, like the idea that frivolous malpractice suits are driving up premiums, is a falsehood that I have no doubt is deliberately propagated in the public mind by the insurance industry at the highest levels and its political representatives. Other countries with universal health care often include private plans.
I’d argue that it’s America that has become ideological – that since Reagan, our government on the whole has been gradually dismantling FDR’s safety nets in favor of a capitalism that’s less and less pragmatic and increasingly a self-serving ideology on the part of the most wealthy and powerful among us.
SUSIEQ: What I heard is going on there – this may be a simplification, it seemed to be a complicated series of financial arrangements in the report I heard – but in essence, state medical associations receive money from companies offering malpractice insurance when they help sell malpractice policies to the doctors in their associations. State med associations are therefore incentivized to exaggerate the risk of malpractice lawsuits to the doctors who belong to their associations. This has resulted in widespread misinformation on this subject among doctors as well as the general public.
I've wondered, in my depressive moments, why God allows human suffering. I've wondered about poverty and wealth among those created in His image. I've wondered why His only begotten Son, lived a life of obscure ridicule, yet His word has lived on. The omniscient, omnipotent in the prayer Christ taught us "...Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done...Give us this day, our daily bread...forgiveus our trespasses AS we forgive those who trespass against us...deliver us from evil."
Please notice the promises God holds for us, and the things He asks of us are spiritual concepts He asks of us to deliver on earth; His promises are yet to be and will occur in a spritual, not a corporeal world.
Many of the comments make a catagory mistake ( read Gilbert Ryle); God doesn't promise that a man's life will be painless and fair. I think an interesting question is "what becomes of the man whose life is painful and unfair?"
When you think about it, there aren't my things we know that are ABSOLUTELY true except that "if you are born, you will die." Healthcare, riches, fitness, pain or poverty are conditions that may be added to my suggestion of an absolute truth, without changing its truth-value. Sorry for the fragmented thoughts; too many med's.
If some malpractice insurance companies are compensating state med assoc. in any way for helping to convince doctors to buy their insurance, I am pretty sure they are breaking the law. It is illegal to do that kind of thing in the insurance industry with any sort of insurance I am pretty sure.
So, it would not be going on that much and could not account for doctors deciding to buy malpractice insurance and practice defensive medicine....is my guess.
"Socialism."
Bad, bad words to those that can only seem to define these terms in the context of "more taxes: and "big government."
But what do we have now? We have a ever compounding deficit due to our mission of forcing our brand of "democracy" down a nation's throat; and in so doing we see over 60,000 civillian casualties in the nation that we have sought to liberate. I have more government in my life now than I had even in the Vietnam protest era.
Lucy said that consumer driven health care is the answer. I do believe that there is a great deal of personal responsibility in doing things in an effoet to avoid being or getting sick. However, in spite of some heroic efforts by certain individuals some of us do get ill.
Insurance companies, drug companies and the business of healthcare is as corrupt as Haliburton. Money, money, money. Profits are of greater importance than health. That's true.
Ask a sick person who has fought for their life and have found that their healthcare provider showed greater coldness than a grade school nun.
You're more on your own than you would think.
Unless you're a politician.
I haven’t noticed any comments on this thread where the person appears to expect life to be painless and fair, which would indeed be patently unrealistic. And this would be a very different thing from objecting to social injustices whose causes and remedies are in the realm of human behavior.
SUSIEQ: From what I’ve experienced personally, from my awareness of the millions of uninsured, underinsured, and badly served, and from the heavy involvement of health insurance in lobbying and campaign financing, I have to view the industry not so much as heavily regulated as self regulated.
The report I mentioned didn’t sound like news about something criminal – although from what I heard, it probably should be. Just sounded like matter of fact reporting about how it is. It may not be the same in every state, similar to the way that insurance companies aren't able to apply the preexisting condition exclusion in all states/situations.
One indicator that the industry isn’t well regulated is precisely the fact that things vary so much from state to state and situation to situation. The federal government has largely abdicated responsibility. And what the states decide, again, is heavily influenced by the lobbying efforts of health insurance companies. I saw it happen at close range in my home state of New Hampshire.
TIM: The figures there are staggering – in the hundreds of billions - and dwarf anything on the domestic side.
“Wasteful government spending” doesn’t even begin to capture it. The willingness to spend that kind of taxpayer dollars on what, from the outset was – to put it in the kindest light – a controversial decision to attack another nation preemptively… it’s mind boggling.
For sure people don’t choose to become ill. The most you can say is that some people lead lifestyles that increase their risk. But I can’t imagine that this begins to outweigh the genetic and environmental factors not under our individual control when it comes to the causes of disease.
Furthermore, some people with risky lifestyles live to be ninety; some who lead highly responsible lifestyles fall ill prematurely. Some people eat junk food for comfort in large quantities and don’t gain weight. Others eat responsibly and become overweight anyway, gaining weight even if they indulge themselves only a little bit from time to time. Smoking highly increases the odds of lung cancer – but some heavy smokers never develop it.
I’d sure hate to have any agency, private or governmental, decide which of us is and isn’t individually responsible for the state of our health. Would we even want a system that's designed to withhold health care to punish people who, for whatever reason, have lost their health??
When I was in college, I did not have health insurance. I ended up with kidney stones that had to be surgically removed. The hospital wanted more than $10,000 from me, and even after talking with the financial representatives, they only lowered it to $7,000. I could only afford to make payments of $50 a month, which they would not accept, because they said it was "not enough", so they put it on my credit report. Today, I could have had spotless credit if it wasn't for that; it's still on my report.
I bet a large percentage of people in their twenties don’t have health insurance; at that age most of us look at the price of the premium, ask ourselves “How likely am I to get anything more than a bad cold?” and decide it’s not worth it, considering how at that stage of our lives we may be making little money. That’s how I handled things then. During most of my twenties, I didn’t even have a job that offered heath insurance.
MARK: If by ills you mean “troubles” I agree that most human misery is caused or enhanced by the things we do or fail to do – for each other as much as for ourselves. If by ills you mean illnesses, I disagree as per my April archives.
What is your definition of healthy?
Precise biological definitions for terms like “health” and “disease” are hard to pin down even for professionals in science and medicine. “Not sick” – that’s what I mean by healthy. People have a good working understanding of the difference between the two, which is probably the reason one doesn’t hear the question of definitions for these terms come up in discussions of health care.
It sounds as if you’re against health care coverage for all people, regardless of how it’s done – for example, irrespective of the degree to which insurance remains privatized? If that’s correct, I’m wondering who you’d like to see excluded and why.
As things stand now, you could easily become one of them – say, when you’re between jobs, or when you retire. For example, many employers are now looking at terminating insurance benefits for their retirees because of steadily and rapidly rising premiums. It’s one of the things at issue right now with the UAW on strike.
Unless I misunderstood your earlier post, you did, indeed, state that “everyone has a right to be healthy.”
Sophia said...
I believe that everyone has the right to be healthy. This should not just be a privilege to those who have the financial means.
Paul said...
SOPHIA: I agree. It’s too basic not to be –
While I currently have health insurance through my employer, for a long time I did not have ANY coverage, which was a financial burden as my many Dr. appointments and pricey prescriptions were paid out of pocket.
I'm not against Health Coverage, but I haven't seen/heard/read a solution that I can in good conscience get on board with.
The Socialized Medicine/Universal Healthcare models of other countries is a great big shining example (in my humble opinion) of what NOT to do.
I WISH everyone could have all the medical attention they need at reasonable costs, but who will pay for it? I know that if I suddenly ended up in the 50% tax bracket, I could not continue to have a place to live, a car to drive or food to eat.
I also know that the many abuses of medical services by the seedier and less legal members of society is a great burden on those of us that DO play by the rules.
I’m not so sure from what you say here that you’re necessarily on a different wavelength from most comments on this thread. Nobody’s talking about the wholesale adoption of some other nation’s system. And any system will have its pros and cons. The point is that there are enough problems with our system that it’s in need of change.
If you happened not to have coverage and had come down with something like I have, it would be more than a financial burden. You’d have lost everything – your ability to support yourself – years ago. I’m in my fourteenth year of this.
It sounds like you identify the word “universal” with communism. The US isn’t communist, doesn’t look remotely likely to become so, and we’ve already got universal regulation/oversight over things like air quality, car safety, workplace safety, food processing – in fact, a lot of these universals relate to health and safety. Health and safety issues are too important to trust people with a profit motive to run them with little oversight and expect them to behave altruistically.
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