Spirituality & Adversity with a Healthcare Emphasis: IV
Agreeing to Agree?
It seems to me that much of the angry divisiveness in discussions about health care and other matters today comes from the top down. Whether it’s the media’s need to reduce thought to slogans that fit into sound bites or politicians who deliberately oversimplify issues to score easy points – probably some of each – I think they often set a poor example.
On health care, I believe that most people, if given an honest overview of what’s going on today, would agree that significant reform is needed even where we disagree on details or even the general approach.
The Rhetoric of Politicians
The simple recognition that reform is needed is critical. There are politicians who very much want to keep things as they are for their own political reasons and who mislead the public to the point of outright lying. Example: The ever-popular “We don’t need health care reform because patients already have the right to sue.” Although you may be (happily) unaware of the details as to why it’s rarely feasible to sue a health insurance corporation, it’s clear to anyone upon a moment’s reflection that the last thing somebody with a health problem needs is suspension of treatment to engage in a few years of litigation!
Another sound bite I happened to hear the other day: supposedly, funding the Schips program to reduce how many millions of our children remain uninsured is the first step toward “socialized medicine.”
The Common Sense of Citizens
As if our only choices are pure capitalism vs. pure socialism! Historically, America has avoided ideological extremes to embrace common sense “what works” approaches. We provide strong incentives for people to hold jobs and start their own businesses, but this doesn’t keep us from valuing “social security” – not “socialized security.” Stuff happens. We know that without social security plenty of people, often through no fault of their own – for example, they could easily find their life’s savings eaten up by uninsured heath problems… would experience an old age of destitution.
We like having the USDA inspect our food. We like having strict government oversight for asbestos in school buildings, lead paint in toys, standards for workplace and air traffic safety, pollution, etc. We even like having the government own and operate the military. (Notice how well this administration’s “private security contactors” like Blackwater seem to be working out…)
In sum, when it comes to matters of life, death, and bodily harm, I think few of us would say “In matters critical to our health, safety, and security, let’s trust business to reliably put our individual and national well being ahead of increased profit margins in situations where additional profit could be obtained by compromising the quality of goods and services.” Not going along for this ride doesn’t mean enrolling in the communist party or risking another Red Scare in which maybe we’d have to worry that we’ll be infiltrated and taken over by… Cuba?
The Wisdom of the Founding Fathers
To my mind, the founding fathers had it right with the concept of a balance of powers. They were not, however, in a position to foresee how much power big businesses would amass and the necessity of protecting our form of government from its highly funded and well organized political financing and lobbying operations.
But we are. And the role of big money in determining who runs for and wins races for higher office runs counter to the principles on which our nation was founded. I believe it’s undermining democracy right here at home even as we’re told that we're exporting it abroad.
It seems to me that much of the angry divisiveness in discussions about health care and other matters today comes from the top down. Whether it’s the media’s need to reduce thought to slogans that fit into sound bites or politicians who deliberately oversimplify issues to score easy points – probably some of each – I think they often set a poor example.
On health care, I believe that most people, if given an honest overview of what’s going on today, would agree that significant reform is needed even where we disagree on details or even the general approach.
The Rhetoric of Politicians
The simple recognition that reform is needed is critical. There are politicians who very much want to keep things as they are for their own political reasons and who mislead the public to the point of outright lying. Example: The ever-popular “We don’t need health care reform because patients already have the right to sue.” Although you may be (happily) unaware of the details as to why it’s rarely feasible to sue a health insurance corporation, it’s clear to anyone upon a moment’s reflection that the last thing somebody with a health problem needs is suspension of treatment to engage in a few years of litigation!
Another sound bite I happened to hear the other day: supposedly, funding the Schips program to reduce how many millions of our children remain uninsured is the first step toward “socialized medicine.”
The Common Sense of Citizens
As if our only choices are pure capitalism vs. pure socialism! Historically, America has avoided ideological extremes to embrace common sense “what works” approaches. We provide strong incentives for people to hold jobs and start their own businesses, but this doesn’t keep us from valuing “social security” – not “socialized security.” Stuff happens. We know that without social security plenty of people, often through no fault of their own – for example, they could easily find their life’s savings eaten up by uninsured heath problems… would experience an old age of destitution.
We like having the USDA inspect our food. We like having strict government oversight for asbestos in school buildings, lead paint in toys, standards for workplace and air traffic safety, pollution, etc. We even like having the government own and operate the military. (Notice how well this administration’s “private security contactors” like Blackwater seem to be working out…)
In sum, when it comes to matters of life, death, and bodily harm, I think few of us would say “In matters critical to our health, safety, and security, let’s trust business to reliably put our individual and national well being ahead of increased profit margins in situations where additional profit could be obtained by compromising the quality of goods and services.” Not going along for this ride doesn’t mean enrolling in the communist party or risking another Red Scare in which maybe we’d have to worry that we’ll be infiltrated and taken over by… Cuba?
The Wisdom of the Founding Fathers
To my mind, the founding fathers had it right with the concept of a balance of powers. They were not, however, in a position to foresee how much power big businesses would amass and the necessity of protecting our form of government from its highly funded and well organized political financing and lobbying operations.
But we are. And the role of big money in determining who runs for and wins races for higher office runs counter to the principles on which our nation was founded. I believe it’s undermining democracy right here at home even as we’re told that we're exporting it abroad.
Posted by Paul at 10:46 PM Permalink
22 Comments:
I wonder why a nation that believes in insurance doesn't believe in universal health insurance.
Isn't this an odd contradiction? A lack of faith in government as a lowest-common-denominator service?
An example of coruption in the government is the FDA. They do everything they can to get alternative health care rubbed out in our country. Doctors who have found cures for heart disease and cancer can not perscribe alternative treatments because it might work better than expensive medications that make the drug companies more money. I'm not saying this the way I want, but I hope you get the idea. The drug companies are trying to get Alternative care squashed.
A friend of mine was having trouble with a sour stomach and she asked her doctor what to do about it. He gave her an expensive medication to take and sent her home. The medication didn't work so the lady started studying on her own. She found out that if you take a teaspoon of vinegar when you have a sour stomach that it will go away almost immediately. She asked her doctor why he didn't tell her about vinegar and he said that he was not allowed to tell her about alternative treatments. He said that he was only allowed to tell her about FDA approved medications. I don't know how true that is but this is what he told her.
I have heard story after story of cheaper alternatives being quashed by the FDA, who work in conjunction with the drug companies, pushing them out.
Another example of government waste is what has happened after hurricane Katrina. The government purchased thousands of small mobile homes for people to live in. Many of them were never used, others just disappeared. The government has so much paper work and "too many chiefs and not enough indians", that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing....
I see coruption on both sides and it is a real shame. Hope this isn't too long Paul. Sorry
"Another sound bite I happened to hear the other day: supposedly, funding the Schips program to reduce how many millions of our children remain uninsured is the first step toward “socialized medicine.”
What was actually said was that it "...is the first step toward FEDERALIZING medicine."
There's a big difference.
I’ve followed down that train of thought too. If a people’s representative government doesn’t exist to help protect even their physical health, safety, and lives. . . what is it exactly that government is for again??
MISTIPURPLE: Or as the saying goes: “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
CRYSTAL: I hadn’t heard that about liberation theology. You wonder what people with that idea make of what went on in Poland with its anti-communist solidarity movement as aided by the Catholic Church.
LUCY: I agree. My personal impression is that our government is more corrupt now than it’s ever been, at least in my lifetime. As you suggest, a lot of that corruption comes from the government representing less we the people than very large business entities like the pharmaceuticals industry.
If I had to pick one issue that looks to me as if it underlies corruption, it’s the entanglement of big money and government. It seems like we’ve been talking about campaign finance reform forever. Every election cycle politicians do little song and dance routines around it, but no major changes happen – one loophole’s closed and another gets opened.
RIMSHOT: “Socialized medicine” - NPR, I think two days ago, probably the All Things Considered program, a US congressman was speaking.
I am not sure how corrupt our government really is at the top levels. I think government's major problem at the federal and state levels is that it is just plain too large. We get all this bureaucracy. The same thing happens with corporations. They get to the point that they are too large, too bureaucratic consequently, and they take on a life of their own so that no one is really in charge of them. As Lucy said, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
I think the Hurricane Katrina aftermath disaster was due in large part to bureacracy (rules and regulations, and forms, lots of forms)which naturally slows things up and is not suitable for emergency situations in which services need to be gotten to people fast. "A" can't do zip until he clears it with "B" who needs to clear it with "C" who, in turn, has to run it past "X", "Y", and "Z"....and it all has to be documented on fifty different forms. That is bureaucracy at its finest.
If only things could be simplified.
I agree, Lucy, that for many years alternative medicine was thought of as quackery...snake oil stuff. Probably the drug companies were responsible for a lot of that. They may still be trying to discredit it. But it is better than it used to be though. Don't you think? Years ago, people like Dr. Weil would have been viewed as quacks. Not so much today. It is harder today to discredit alternative medicine.
They own the 'law', they put the blindfold on the lady of justice to keep you from seeing thier identities and realities, not to judge equally.
Socialism is to these people, more scary than anything, and while they seem to allow some, they control it with purse strings, to few employees makes for no administration in social programs, delay defeats.
Keep writing.
Sorry, I just saw that.
BTW, JESUS said to his followers, you will be like this, you will take from the poor, even the little they have, and you will give it to the already rich. They are just living up to his prediction, same with much of what he said, he wasn't telling them to be that way, he was telling them what kind of world they would build, we are living in it.
Priorities are another major factor – what things the organization considers that it’s important and unimportant to spend money on.
I do have a strong impression of government corruption by big business today and have read, more than once, about recent studies indicating that Americans’ distrust of government is at an all time high.
Without being any kind of expert on politics, to me it's to be expected that when we make how much money a candidate can raise a chief factor in their electability and somehow never manage to set limits on how much money can be involved - if the money doesn't get in this way, it gets in that way - then it’s inevitable that the wealthy and powerful interests funding political campaigns would have expectations attached. The result, it seems to me, is that government has come to represent the interests of big business more than the people.
JIM: To me what you point to here is the danger of what I’d call ideological capitalism. Communist/socialist ideologues haven’t met with success historically. I’m concerned that if the US continues to underfund Medicare, move toward privatizing social security, refuses to issue serious mandates to business regarding the environment, and brands every sort of safety net “socialistic,” that we’re eroding our democracy.
I’ve never studied political science, so anybody feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. But to me it seems that pure capitalism and pure socialism each have a way of not working out because they’re overcommitted to ideology to the point of unrealism. Under socialist ideology, people lack the incentives and freedoms needed to do their best work. Under capitalist ideology, even the most basic and legitimate needs of those with little economic clout get trampled underfoot. And somehow either extreme seems to end up concentrating power in the hands of the few, whether it’s the very wealthy or the members of the single party that ends up controlling the state.
If what we really want is democracy – where the people as a whole decide where the nation is going by way of representatives who are responsive and responsible to them – then it seems to me that ideological extremes aren’t the way to go.
My apologies for jumping to conclusions.
ENEMY of the R: Frankly I find it hard to imagine a solution under present conditions. But then nothing stays the same for long.
It seems to me that in the long run the well being not only of America but the human race depends on greater numbers of those people whose basic material needs are already met coming to care, passionately, about matters larger than accumulating wealth and power for their own sake and beyond the limited time frame of their own lives.
Socialism is tyranny only if the people get lazy and allow it to become so (though the same could be said of most governmental systems.) But it is interesting to see how a perceived fear of socialism has hamstrung even capitalist institutions in America. Exhibit number one IS health care. American manufacturers have to pay ever increasing costs for their employee health care packages, while their foreign competitors don't have to do so-- don't have to pay nearly as much (even factoring in taxes), don't have to negotiate the package either with unions or with providers, don't have the headaches or costs of having a benefits coordinator to administer it, and then get to plow all of that extra cash and human capital back into making a better product.
The Founding Fathers could well see what a monster a truly worldwide, multi-national corporation could become, and were therefore very wary of allowing any such abomination to operate in or from the United States.
My take on what you say about sociaiism and other forms of government is that even the most well intended and, in our case, realistically ingenious systems, go bad when enough people within the system try to get around its aim of serving the greater good and instead manipulate it for personal power and gain.
To what you cite concerning the inefficiencies, even just in economic terms, of how our health care corporations are now allowed to run things, I would add the cost of providing health care to people who are allowed to develop advanced health problems because they don’t get timely medical attention due to inadequate or absent health coverage. When these people eventually show up in an emergency room and require hospitalization, somebody’s paying for that…
Thanks for the thoughtful comment and for expanding on Hayden’s remarks.
I can't recall the figures but I've heard appalling stats on what the major pharmaceutical companies spend on marketing vs. R&D. The marketing includes heavy marketing to physicians to peddle their wares; recently I heard a report, I believe it involved litigation, on doctors who have been paid to push particular brands.
And while federal funding for drug research at medical schools has been declining, guess who’s been stepping in to fill the breach – and gotten caught repeatedly suppressing unfavorable information on new drugs?
I feel for your experiences. I too have had to fight the American health care system over the years to receive the care that I needed.I would like to say as a medical student that doctors are victims of the system, we are trapped in the red tape of bureaucracy, legalism and big business. But I think that is a sorry excuse for our actions. I also would love to say that doctors just didn't know how bad it is but I can't believe that is true because every medical journal in this country is talking about underserved populations. I think doctors feel powerless by numbers like 42 million people uninsured and the one thing that really smart professionals hate is feeling powerless.
I believe that doctors need stop writing articles and start doctoring those who really need it. If we can't get any where politically or commercially, lets get there personally. Thats my hopeless idealism talking but its why I went to medical school. The question is can I make it to graduation without being brainwashed by the system....
In response to your blog/comments...
Yep our government is corrupt but compared to elsewhere where everything is openly run by bribes and favors, its not that bad. It could be worse.
Underfunding medicaid is just a wrong on so many levels. Even the economics...We live in a incredibly wealthy nation, we can afford to give children health care. If we take care of kids now, we prevent more expensive health issues down the road.
I want universal health care insurance to work...I really do. But despite my hopeless idealism, I have doubts of such a system working in the US. At least any time soon. As you have pointed out this not just about health care insurance...its about drug companies, jobs, research, incentives...even if we passed a law tomorrow, the sheer logistics will take decades. Also its hard for me to imagine Americans waiting in line for coronary bypass surgery or really anything...I mean Americans don't wait in line in airports or Disney World without whining, do you really expect them to wait in line for health care?
Despite that as a Christian and hopeless idealist, I do think that physicians need to stand up and fight for our patients and for a better system for ourselves. Yet again...why I went to medical school.
My best guess is that universal health insurance could work here but won’t happen not because it isn’t possible but because entrenched interests are dead set against it and they’ve got a good grip on presidential candidates and congress via campaign financing and lobbying. My impression is that the long lines and waiting lists are exaggerated, probably by info disseminated by health insurance corporations. I do know that European systems are by no means identical – was just reading something on the differences between Germany’s and England’s – and I just can’t imagine America lacks the talent to come up with something that would work for our particular nation.
On a personal note, you say: “The one thing that really smart professionals hate is feeling powerless.” I say: “Oh, yeah…”
People often have no idea – that is, people with illnesses that aren’t rare/difficult to diagnose/treat – how toxic the attitudes of many doctors can become toward patients who “fail” to recover. I mean you get the message: YOU failed. The more I got to know doctors – over a decade of intensive research, travel, misdiagnosis, mis-treatment, and, in the end, no dx – the firmer I became in my conclusion that a big ego is a real occupational hazard of the profession. Staff members that are sometimes fawning, patients who are often intimidated, high social status… Most adults happily tend to have ego-diminishing experiences over the course of their lives, but I’m afraid that many doctors build their egos over the course of their years.
Of course I’ve also seen physicians who don’t go this route. One of my doctors was such a kind, compassionate, and completely unpretentious person that I felt some real sadness that I didn’t recover for his sake as well as my own. With him, there wasn’t even a hint of any personal frustration toward me for “failing” and absolutely no attempt to invent reasons that I prevented his treatment from working. I hate to say it, but he was exceptional.
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