Ted Kennedy's recent impassioned and outraged speech to his congressional colleagues about their hypocrisy in accepting tax payer funded healthcare while voting against the rest of us receiving it was one of his finest moments. And while I can find plenty to get frustrated at in Kennedy's life and career, he had many of those moments when a public servant lived up to the best of that description.
For one who was born into the fledgling National Health Service, the American approach to the health care of its population has always been a head shakingly frustrating discussion for me. And when I first came to the US for an extended time I collided head on with this system when suddenly one night I developed the most crushing stomach cramps and my girlfriend at the time rushed me to the local hospital where, it must be said, I got great treatment from a terrific set of caring doctors and nurses and then after I recovered was ushered into the back room for the money talk. And for the first time in my life I signed up for 'charity'. The bill, which exceeded 3,000 dollars, was well outside my ability to pay at the time. And it got paid - by someone else. By whatever Catholic Charity or other non-profit partnered with that hospital.
And I'm embarrassed to say that over 20 years later, as I stumbled into an emergency room having impaled my elbow on a nail, I signed up once more for help paying a bill that I couldn't possible afford in my current financial state. The bill from the radiologist, the bill from the attending physician, the bill from the emergency room itself, the bill from the person who dressed and treated the wound and who got my blood on their bare hand. At the end of that day, the cost totaled more than 2 mortgage payments on my house.
In the intervening 20 years, I had paid, and paid and paid - for private health care. And even though I was healthy and rarely used the system, my monthly premiums went higher with each birthday and my co-pay got bigger and finally - when my income began to shrink, I made a choice. My house payments or my health care premiums. I dropped my private health care. And became one of those millions who leaves the house each day and hopes the cars stop at the crosswalk or that I don't trip and fall.
I liked Kaiser. I knew how to get the best out of the system. But I've sat in waiting rooms for hours, sat again in the stifling small exam rooms while the doctors were running late, have been told by my doctor that she could only discuss a certain number of items during a visit, and when I got behind on paying my $450 per month premium, was denied a visit while I was clearly having a health problem. By a girl, barely out of her teens who told me to just go to the finance office on the 2nd floor and pay and then I could be seen.
What is it with you Americans that you don't see that your health care is already rationed?
Americans are determined to present an image of an independent, get the government out of my face pioneer, yet the vast majority of working Americans are tied, hook line and sinker to an employer and to a job they may hate because your health care and that of your loved ones is tied to a corporation. Most Americans are now 'tied' to companies because of your dependence on the healthcare package, every bit as much as workers once were tied to the company towns they worked in and whose homes were owned by the robber barons and first major industrialists of this phenomenal and great nation.
It's an interesting phenomenon to witness former 60's radicals who were trying to bring what they saw as a corrupt government to it's knees - Vietnam, Kent State, the pitched battles of the Free Speech movement in Berkeley, the Weather Underground, Black Panthers - become the primary endorsers of a government run health system and to see the new radicals - the loud, bullying, under-educated mobs of 'conservatives' massing on the new battlefront - howl about how a public option in health care reform would involve a government 'death panel' deciding when to kill your granny. How would you rather have decisions made? You and your doctor in a fully run government system like Medicare? A system which can always be changed simply because it is government run, or you and your doctor in a private system where automatic letters are sent out telling you your coverage has been dropped because you missed a payment?
Do I think the National Health Service is a perfect system? Nope. Do I think the Public Education system is unflawed? Think again. But do I believe the American way of sub-contracting out what really is supposed to be a full-on government program - the military - to private companies like Blackwater is any better? Hell, freakin' no. And just think on this - the entire National Health Service in Britain serving the population of 60 million employs fewer people than one US government department - Defense.
When the NHS was miraculously brought into existence in 1946 (enacted in 1948) the principles were simple:
- That it meet the needs of everyone
- That it be free at the point of delivery
- That it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay
Since then a more complex set of principles has been added, and more services are now jointly run by a public/private option, almost 10% of people in the UK choose a fully private system (and are able to pay for it) and there have always been areas which are not covered 100% - like dental care.
In 1948, as the UK was heralding a new era in social justice by providing health care for all, President Truman was asking Congress to support federal anti-lynching legislation. That effort, like others before it, failed. Social justice - as embodied in the way in which we care for and educate all of us - is facing one of it's greatest challenges right now in America. Ted Kennedy - you will be missed.
I do know that our health care is rationed. But that asshat Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) doesn't. It drives me crazy that she is in Congress representing part of Minnesota. I better stop because my blood pressure is going up and I may need some rationed care.
Posted by: Deb in Minnesota | August 28, 2009 at 07:08 AM