For the past year I’ve been dependent upon on the US health care system to keep me alive the way I’ve had to depend on an unfamiliar mechanic to repair a car broken down a long way from home. The last thing anyone who is sick wants to do is deal with the complexities and frustrations of an insurance company. Unfortunately, it’s what we US citizens must do because our politicians cannot manage to create a health system that serves the citizenry.
Even with full coverage (and a high deductible) by United Heath Care, my medical bills are extraordinary. If I spent the same amount of money on a vacation that I spent on co-payments, drugs and non-covered fees, I would have been able to travel to and around Europe for a month, going first class all the way. Like the items my health insurer didn’t cover - surgical tubing, band-aids, several prescriptions, a second opinion – such expenses would be considered unnecessary, perhaps frivolous.
The argument against a single payer or universal health care is that the level of care would sink to unacceptable levels and we would all get sick and die more often. I imagine this means that doctors would become poor practitioners, make mistakes more often and resent their patients. Hospitals would turn into dormitories for the sick. Health care would become a gigantic, clumsy, inept clinic system with treatment based on the cheapest available medication and the quickest surgical procedures possible, an assembly line that Kaiser would envy. As if this hasn’t happened already.
The medical profession has already lost much of its independence because insurers now “pre-approve” procedures and treatments, thus forcing patients to chose between debt and health. I had to argue for payment of the ICU after I had been transferred there from the OR while unconscious. United Health Care originally stated they had to determine whether the ICU was necessary in order to be covered. My unconsciousness was not an acceptable explanation; my doctor, they argued, was conscious and capable of phoning them from the OR.
In a letter sent on the day I was transferred to the ICU, UHC told me they would contact me and my physician to determine the best possible course of treatment. UHC was telling me and my doctor what to do.
How is it that a universal health care system, modeled on a similar country like Canada, which works very well, is not discussed as a goal, as a key political issue and a mandate from millions of disgruntled and injured Americans? Insurance representatives are not health professionals, yet the law and the current health care system demands that as publicly held corporations, insurance companies’ responsibility is to make a profit because their responsibility is to their stockholders, not to those covered by their insurance. Private companies have a responsibility to their owners, not to their investors, employees, contractors or clients.
Why is it considered impossible to make a universal health care system that costs less than what we spend now, 15% of our gross national product (the highest percentage in the world), when it’s so easy to construct the argument and the facilities for war? Health is a delicate balance of the many factors that allow us to live at all. Creating and maintaining our shared physical and psychic environment, safe working conditions, accessibility to practitioners and availability of medicines, encouraging the complete education of health care workers and of patients, regulating and controlling the food supply, pharmaceuticals and the entire infrastructure are all the responsibility of our elected representatives.
As long as we allow campaigns to be funded by lobbyists and determine our priorities according to those that scream the loudest –like the big mouths on talk radio - or raise the most money – like pharmaceutical and gun manufacturers - we declare money is the same as speech. Until we no longer allow corporations to be legally considered individuals with rights but without responsibilities, we are going to be sick and tired.
I am both those things and angry as well – and I haven’t even seen Sicko! I explain to anyone who will listen that taxes aren’t bad, if they are spent well and on important things, on things that strengthen society like schools and pertinent regulation. I write to my representatives and to newspaper editors. I spend time and money on organizations that espouse a universal heath care system and proper health care standards.
And I hope I don’t break down in the desert.
