When I was teaching college in Pennsylvania, I had a
colleague whose car sported a telling bumper
sticker: “Our national health care plan: Don’t
get sick.” As true as that is, I think America’s
real health care plan can be summed up by a
corporate motto of my own coining: You can make
a lot of money off sick people.
This came to mind today as my wife returned from a routine
medical appointment. She overheard a lady
complaining to a clerk that she didn’t
understand her health insurance and why her
latest procedure hadn’t been covered. Meanwhile,
my wife noticed a sign about Medicare at the
office, something about a new requirement that
medical professionals were apologizing for in
advance. And so it goes in the land of the free
…
If you’re an American and 100% pleased with your medical
care, you are a rare bird indeed. It’s an
incredibly complex “system” with its own logic
driven by the need to make money, whether off
drugs or surgical procedures or whatever. I’ve
talked to doctors and they tell me they’re
typically allotted fifteen minutes per patient.
They have to see a certain number of patients
per hour, creating billable actions in the
computer tablets they increasingly carry around
with them, to fulfill quotas and to stay in
business.
A heart specialist I was seeing, a truly sympathetic and
knowledgable doctor, got fed up with all the
emphasis on billing and money and took another
position at a different hospital where he could
do more research. At his practice, I noted new
computer monitors in the examination rooms
featuring videos that advertised drugs to lower
cholesterol, improve blood pressure, and the
like, along with pamphlets featuring shiny happy
people taking various drugs related to heart and
blood care. Honestly, I felt good for my doctor
that he was going to a better job for him even
as I felt bad for all his patients, myself
included.
A big reason I supported Bernie Sanders was his seemingly
empathetic and principled call for affordable
health care for all, some kind of national plan
that would deemphasize the profit motive, ending
the tragic reality that some Americans have to
choose between their own health and bankruptcy.
Naturally, the Democratic Party, in league with
big Pharma, health insurers (they should be
called health deniers for their business model
that seeks to deny claims whenever possible),
and other corporate forces, threw their
considerable financial support behind corporate
tools like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Biden
promised a public option. I guess he forgot
about it.
Speaking of Biden, he of course promised a public
(government) option on the campaign trail, only
to renege on
that promise once he became president. Biden, a tired corporate
hack, will never go to bat for affordable health
care, which is no endorsement of his Republican
opponents. Their “plan” consists of encouraging
bake sales and go-fund-me appeals along with
vague hints of Scrooge-like notions: If you
can’t afford your health care, you had best die
to decrease the surplus population.
Are there no prisons, no workhouses?
The health of our society, in a sense, is the aggregate of
the health of 333 million of us. Americans are
increasingly sick, obese, depressed, tense, even
suicidal. And it seems the first question some
“providers” ask here is: How can I make money
off this?
P.S. I kid you not. I just got an email from Amazon saying
that “Your new pharmacy is here.” I feel happier
and healthier already!
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