sicko

I went to see Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko, the other day. It’s about the current health care crisis in the US of A. Even though my thoughts as I left the theater were somewhere along the lines of ‘What the hell am I doing living in this country?!’ I have to admit that the sentiment wasn’t a surprise for me. I’ve felt the same way after watching all of his previous films. I’m not going to get into talking about gun control, or 911 theories here. But I do want to get into the health care crisis issue.
I grew up in a third world country, and though health care was fairly socialized, most hospitals and clinics had absolutely nothing to help people in need. I mean, not even bandages. That is what happens in the third world sometimes, but doctors tried, and people went to these facilities to have their babies and get their bones set. Even if it wasn’t as functional as one would have liked it, the idea was in place that citizens’ health was to be subsidized by the government. Everybody paid their taxes knowing that this was a big part of it: Health care and education.
Somewhere in the mid 90’s my country’s economy crumbled and collapsed. The mighty dollar became the official currency, and all trace of socialized anything disappeared. People stopped getting their social security checks (Watch out folks! It does happen.) Public hospitals and schools started closing, MD’s got caught in the middle of a plutocracy that made it impossible to really be of any help. All of the sudden there is a bulging middle class, fueled exclusively by credit. They have insurance, but it doesn’t cover anything they need it for. The upper class keeps all of everything, their insurance covers everything and boy do they pay for it! The lower class has no insurance and no resources and no way of getting any because of the giant buffer the middle class conveniently provides. Sound familiar?
There is little opportunity in my country, and that is why I don’t live there.
I live in this country because it feels like home to me after living here for 17 years. I live here because the feminist revolution happened here, because the peace movement happened here. Because I love country music and driving through the Southwest.
But the health care thing? The rugged individualist thing? I take care of me and you take care of yourself. You have got to be kidding! We live in an insanely wealthy country. How come, then, do millions of people have nothing healthy to eat and nowhere to go when they get sick? It makes no sense.
I love community acupuncture because it is a window into a socialized way of offering health care. I take care of you, you take care of me. It works beautifully, and in my experience, people get right into it. It makes sense to most people. What we are doing is a big deal, and it is spreading. The problem is that the MD’s are not catching on, or they don’t know how to go about it. Their beurocracy is too big. We have to figure out a way to make this approach to health care work for the MD’s too. We have to reach out to our Western medicine colleagues and bring up this issue. How are you all going to jump on board? How are you going to really honor the oath you took when you finished med school? How can we help you get there?
I have no health insurance, and hadn’t gotten a pap exam for over six years. I went in this spring and the practitioner found some cervical polyps she said had to be removed. She said the procedure was very simple, but didn’t want to do it for some unknown reason, despite the $100 she charged. Instead, and while I was sitting at her office, she called a place that offers subsidies for women whose polyps have turned out to be cancerous. She mentioned to the person on the other side of the line that she had a patient who might have cancer and needed financial assistance. The help was denied, and furthermore, is that a way to talk about a patient when they are in the room? I was appalled.
I left her office really scared about the cancer thing. I found out that cervical polyps turn cancerous only about 1% of the time. Seems like an important piece of information my practitioner neglected to share with me. Never the less, I called Planned Parenthood and all the county clinics I could find. Everybody said just about the same thing. No insurance meant an additional fee of $100 to $200 to begin with, something like a security deposit, only non-refundable. Then, they wanted to build a relationship with me before any procedure would be done. This meant at least two visits before anybody did anything about these polyps of mine. I was looking at $800 to $1000 dollars. I was feeling like I might as well just die if I indeed had cancer, because there is no way in hell that I was willing to navigate this disgusting inhumane system. That alone would kill me.
Then my good friend mentioned her good friend, an OBGYN practitioner. She had worked in a feminist clinic in the bay area for years, and when that clinic closed for lack of subsidy, this woman ended up with all the medical equipment one would need to operate a women’s clinic. She runs her indie, but totally licensed practice out of the basement of her home. By now my pap results had come in and there was no cancer. I gave this woman a call anyway, told her my story, and she said, Yeah, I know. I don’t have insurance either. Come on in, we’ll take a look. I’m probably cool with doing this procedure, it’s no big deal. It will cost you twenty bucks. Twenty bucks!
I was in her little clinic a couple of weeks later. She had her baby on her hip, and her place was clean and homey and well equipped. She took some time to talk to me before she put me on the table. Less than five minutes later, the deal was done. No pain, no trauma, no antibiotics. Just good old-fashioned health care. You just saved me $900, I told her. No sweat. Come back next year for your pap. She gives me hope about my dream of accessible health care across the board.
We need to find practitioners like these, because they are the missing link. If we can find them, and form strong ethical working relationships with them, we can really revolutionize the way we deal with health care in this country. We can’t wait for the government to take a sharp turn to the left and do it for us. It is our responsibility to get things moving in that direction.