As SICKO prepares to open in a few days, I am more and more convinced that our current healthcare system is truly sick, over-run with profit motives that are like aggressive cancers, waiting to eat us alive.
And like any sickness, especially one of this magnitude, we cannot simply put band-aid treatments on the gushing, frothing wounds. We cannot treat the symptoms - such as proposing to "politely" and gradually extend coverage to more Americans - and think we are creating change or curing the problem.
Uninsured patients are one symptom of the larger problem, and we must not assume that "all we need is universal coverage" and all will be well. This sort of logic assumes that the problem is the uninsured folks themselves, since that is the only thing being addressed in this schema. What we need is to ask, Why?
Why, in the richest country in the world, do a good 50 million or so, go without proper heatlh coverage?
Why, in the country that spends far more than any other nation per-capita on health, do we have embarrasingly poor health outcomes, especially for the marginalized of our society?
The answer, and therefore the solution, does not rest with the victims of this system!
Therefore, a justice-oriented approach leads me to see that removing the for-profit machine that runs our system, including not only the industries (pharmaceutical, insurance, biotech, device manufacturers), but also the workforce (physicians, administrators) is the only medicine worth taking!
Other solutions, watered down to appeal to potential voters, afraid of addressing the 800 pound Gorilla, and instead focusing on the bananas we are feeding him, simply will not do.
In love,
Anthony
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
great blog anthony, i couldn't agree with you more.
i think another aspect of attacking the root of the problem includes the culture of health care in this country. this includes politicians, providers, and the people themselves. to have a culture shift towards what we think of health care has could take many years, decades, centuries, but it's something worth thinking about. if we start agreeing that health care is a right, people deserve to be healthy, and that we should all work towards this common goal together, who knows what could happen. the solution is multi-faceted but it would have to start at the grass roots level like it currently is and hopefully convince enough people to at least discuss this viewpoint.
Post a Comment