Party like it’s 1989
Twenty years ago this summer:
I still love this song.
I hear you out there: “Violet, why are you posting 20-year-old videos? Why don’t you write about important news?”
To which I reply: Why should I write about important news when nobody else is? Okay, not nobody else, but plenty of other elses.
You see, I think the most important issue right now is the healthcare trainwreck. But every day when I check the news, I find that the most important issue is the Saga of the Cop and the Professor. Which is an interesting saga, in its way, though I personally suspect that cop psychology had as much to do with the arrest as racism. Many cops are power-mad assholes — unless they’re state troopers, in which case they’re power-mad assholes with an inferiority complex. It sounds to me like Professor Gates was arrested because he wasn’t being sufficiently obeisant to the man with the badge. As a white woman with a temper who has pissed off a few cops in my day, I can personally attest that you don’t have to be a black man to trip that trigger. Though I’m sure it helps. A lot.
But is this melodrama really more noteworthy than the healthcare debacle? People are fucking dying while Congress fiddles, but all the news is about the cop and the professor. “What beer’s on tap for Obama, Gates and Crowley?” asks the Kansas City Star. Damn. Guys, your Pulitzer is in the mail.
Our culture is so story-oriented, so melodrama-driven, that the media can no longer handle any news item that doesn’t have a clear cast of characters and a strong plot hook. It has to be a story. A story with compelling characters and highly charged personal motivations. The Cop and the Professor. The Gosselin Divorce. The Jackson Family Reality Show From Freaking Hell.
Healthcare, on the other hand, is about policy and billions of dollars and complicated issues of resource management and income streams. Booorring.
You know what we need? And by “we” I mean people who want healthcare reform. A reality show. A reality show featuring an under-insured person with no assets and crippling illness. Yeah! The cameras can follow the person as she tries to scrounge up cash for her co-pays, avoids having critical lab work done because she can’t afford it, and fends off calls from Chase Bank as they raise minimum monthly payments from 2% to 5% of the balance in order to soak people before the credit card reform bill goes into effect next year. The drama!
Maybe then the media would pay attention.
54 Responses to “Party like it’s 1989”
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Branjor says:
I think you’ve got something there re a reality show for uninsured/underinsured/insured people with major illnesses. We’d probably get better healthcare reforms the better the ratings.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:15 pm EST -
Swannie says:
Knowing there is still racial profiling in this country .. how does it help to exacerbate the situation … tell people they handled themsleves badly by handling yourself badly and stupidly … oh yay … while people die in the streets from violance and in their homes from lack of medical care. Maybe it is a feminist thing.. maybe not, but I would personally never dream of telling a cop “you don’t know who you
are mssing with”
And I have been arrested .. for not having dog tags on my dog; in Boulder Colorado , more than twenty years ago. It did not help that my “old man” came running into the cop station and said , that is MY DOG but I have never seen her before ” The cops kept me in jail for a few hours and put the dog in the pound , and I wasn’t even arguing…I just said “what do you mean no dog tags on my dog?? ” and eventually charges were dismissed because I lived outside the jurisdiction where tags were required but that was just a technicality.
Still …. the folks at the free clinic that same year treated me for my kidney infection without so much as asking moer than my allergies…….What happened to the idea of walk in free clinics ?? Lets have one next to every emergency department …
Why cant we just start with the 8 million children not insured and just insure them … maybe if the kids are all insured the parents can afford health care for themselves..
And lets call the “reality show ” out here ” where the rubber meets the road ” We could get rich and afford health care .. -
AniEm says:
Health care reform smacks of compassion and you’re not going to get compassion from Congress just like you’re not going to get blood from a rock. The voyeurism of the reality TV show is a selling point, but you would have to guarantee a death “reveal” at the end of every broadcast.
RIP, USA.
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FLAConnie says:
Don’t you think that one of the main reasons that stories, such as the abyssmal state of health uncare in the US, is just who is paying for the news? Big Pharma, Big Insurance companies advertise everywhere. Advertisers control the news we get, which is one of the reasons I don’t watch tv news. Bill Moyers on PBS has done a couple of shows on health care reform, including a show this past Friday. Maybe what’s needed are videos flooding You Tube telling the true stories of people victimized by the health care system in our nation. Is there any single person in this country that doesn’t have a horror story to relate about someone in their family or someone they know who has struggled with a serious illness or disease? This is the one thing we all have in common. And shouldn’t our tax dollars be spent on US for a change and not to line the pockets of some politician?
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JLawson says:
I’ve always thought the best solution to the health care problem would be to have cheap prescritions (like the $4 ones at Walmart and Walgreens) coupled with a debit-type health card that you could use at the cheap clinics (which are also, oddly enough) available at Walgreens, CVS and some Walmarts.
Preload the card with $1000, that’d give you ten visits @$70 each and 5 prescriptions @$4 each for 12 months. For 45 million people that’d be… (let’s see, carry the 5, add the 8, divide by 7…) $45 billion a year. Add $5 billion for administrative overhead, and you’ve got a $50 billion program that covers the folks who need it most.
$50 billion. Heck, that’s practically petty cash for the government any more…
Make it so that money could ONLY be spent for health care visits at approved locations (which could include GPs that wish to be included in the system) and generic prescriptions from approved pharmacies. Have the card’s account automatically refreshed each year – but keep the amount at $1000. If they don’t use the card, nothing needed to be put back onto it, so the money wouldn’t need to be spent.
More complex problems would be handled under Medicaid.
We could use the IRS and state unemployment rolls to find folks that are eligible for this – and issue the cards out attached to the users’ SSAN. Three in the family? Three cards.
Of course, such a thing isn’t foolproof. And it wouldn’t cover such things as ambulance rides, MRIs and the like – but it’d get primary care coverage for the folks who need it for a low cost.
Guess that’s no wonder it’s not even on the radar as an idea. Doesn’t cost enough, doesn’t create a few hundred thousand government jobs, isn’t intrusive enough, and would likely lead to a healthier population.
I like to think of myself as a practical person – where a fix that works is the most important thing. But it sure seems to me like government’s idea of a ‘good fix’ for a social issue is always enormously expensive and exceedingly complex, with ‘improvements’ that are pretty difficult to discern. And I’m not sure massive reform is what we’re in need of at all.
This last week, my mother fell and hurt her hip – since she’s 91 with osteoporosis she was immediately shuttled to the hospital. We were there in the ER for about 4 hours, and thankfully, a CAT scan and XRays showed nothing was broken, but they kept her for a couple of nights for observation.
In the next bay of the ER, we had an entertaining (if short) succession of people. One was a young guy, in his 20s or so, who dropped an air conditioner on his bare foot. He didn’t have insurance – but he got things arranged with a case worker. He was actually kind of amused to get his foot xrayed – he said he’d broken his leg, his arm twice and his ribs several times, but never his foot. Stitches and novocaine, and he walked out of there.
The next customer was ‘Frank’ – who didn’t have insurance, didn’t have a job, was in a ‘program’ which was supposed to help him with something unspecified, wanted to see a case worker to get a machine that he could stick himself with, was in the ER last week because he passed out and they gave him some pills for his diabetes, but he didn’t know what they were. He was also thirsty, and wanted some ginger ale.
When asked if he’d been eating regularly, he said he had some meatloaf yesterday at the lake with some friends, but after that he took one of his pills and then he was feeling shakey, and he had some hot dogs this morning. The doctor examined him, asked him if he was using any illegal drugs.
Frank asked “Wha?” Patiently the doctor explained “Cocaine, Pot, Marijuana, speed, hash, you know.” Frank replied “Nah, they check us once a week to see if we’ve been drinking. On Sunday. I’m in a program, and we ain’t supposed to do stuff like that, they’ll tell my probation officer. Can I see a caseworker? And I’m almost out of those pills I got last week.”
Two folks, no insurance (and in ‘Frank’s’ case, I’m not sure he could keep track of an insurance card if it was surgically attached) who got the care they needed.
Wouldn’t it be better to do small tweaks to improve the current system than come up with a complex and expensive replacement that’ll have significant flaws on its own?
As far as discrimination goes, I spent the night in jail after running a red light. I was polite to the policeman, yet still had my car towed off and was tossed into a holding cell.
I didn’t have an insurance card. And I’m a white male – that apparently didn’t help!
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Sis says:
My guess is people would send money swathed in bless you’s, and lots of I’m praying for you’s. That would be the end of it. Because never want to really change anything. Like what got them the healthcare they’ve got.
And Obama’s got the press he created. The whining and wailing, wondering what beer they’ll drink, and the people he’ll be waving to when the flip sides of the same coin arrive in their respective limos.
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sister of ye says:
Well, JLawson, if I’m going to be a second-class citizen assigned to a “cheap clinic,” I’d rather go to one attached to a company with a better employee treatment record than Walmart. As for CVS, that “cheap clinic” wouldn’t see me if I went because I have the “wrong” insurance, though it gladly accepts that company’s payment for the prescriptions I fill there.
And two non-insured people got seen while you were in the ER. Guess that invalidates all those stories of people turned away.
Kind of curious who paid for your mother’s care. Not Medicare, by chance? Evidently you don’t mind some government workers.
BTW, I don’t work for “the government,” but working at a law firm, I deal sometimes with people at the courts and other agencies, and guess what? They earn their pay the same as everyone else. Same with the people at the Post Office, etc.
Back when I could still handle riding the bus, I heard two women griping about their high taxes. A bit later in their conversation, they were griping about the bad state of the roads. And I wondered about how they thought the roads got fixed.
Apparently they were under the impression that roads are fixed by road construction fairies who do it magically for free, not flesh-and-blood construction workers who need to support themselves and their families, paid with money collected by “the government” thru taxes.
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angienc says:
I know what you mean about “the cop psychology” BUT what, exactly, did Gates have to be upset about? The police showed up at his door because he was trying to protect his home from a reported B&E. I happen to have been in that almost exact position a few years back when I helped my mom “break in” to her house when she lost her keys & someone, obviously, saw me jumping the fence & crawling through the window & called 911. My mom & I were grateful for both the unknown citizen being “watching out” for the neighborhood & grateful to the police for showing up so quickly. Should Gates have been arrested? Probably not. But the right thing to do is cooperate when the police are only showing up at your door to HELP you.
Also, I’m flabbergasted that people are calling this “racial profiling” — this isn’t racial profiling. Racial profiling is stopping a black guy driving in a “white” neighborhood when he is obeying the traffic laws. Showing up to investigate a reported B&E to a house where a black guy happens to live is not, and calling it such is a disservice to the real racial profiling that occurs. -
Sis says:
Figure this out if you can. From “What Tami Said.”
“Additionally, we now know more about the woman who placed that 911 call that started this whole mess. Her name is Lucia Whalen and she is the Circulation and Fundraising Manager for Harvard Magazine. She is a 40 year-old white woman who lives in Malden, and Harvard Magazine took down her email address from their website because I’m sure this woman was receiving a LOAD of painful email–which honestly she deserves because how can you work for Harvard Magazine, whose doors are literally a few doors down from Gates’ residence and NOT recognize Henry Louis Gates Jr., and even if you didn’t recognize your neighbor and one of the most famous professors at Harvard, how could you not recognize the black town car parked in front of the house–the luggage–the fact that the driver was dressed in a suit and tie–and how could you add all this up and think that two black men were trying to rob a house IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY? Shame on YOU Lucia Whalen…shame on you.”
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Adrienne in CA says:
Want a reality show? Here’s one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEi0OveTtO8
Reality sucks, but we already know how to fix it.
This exact plan passed the CA legislature in 2006, only to be vetoed by The Terminator. Hopefully we’ll have a better governor when it passes next time.
*****A
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foxx says:
Well Sis I am not sure why you are quoting Tami, but there is way too much of this on the blogs, scapegoating this woman for calling the cops. This is sexism pure and simple, scapegoating a woman. People are making all kinds of assumptions about this woman on no evidence, calling her a racist etc etc. They have no idea what she could see, why she would or wouldn’t know Gates. One blogger even said “we all know how scared white women are of black men.” And Gates himsself participated in it, if the accounts of his statements about the “white woman” are correct. It is an outrage the abuse heaped on this woman who was simply looking out for Gates’ property.
And the naivete to think people don’t break down doors in the middle of the day. They sure do where I have lived!!!
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JLawson says:
@sister of ye -
“Well, JLawson, if I’m going to be a second-class citizen assigned to a “cheap clinic,” I’d rather go to one attached to a company with a better employee treatment record than Walmart. As for CVS, that “cheap clinic” wouldn’t see me if I went because I have the “wrong” insurance, though it gladly accepts that company’s payment for the prescriptions I fill there.”
I’ve been to a Walgreen’s clinic for sinus problems when I didn’t want to wait a week to see my primary doctor. Paid cash for it, too. $70, in and out in about half an hour. That $70 payment is what I base my suggestion on.
“And two non-insured people got seen while you were in the ER. Guess that invalidates all those stories of people turned away.”
No, but neither does a ‘story’ of ‘people turned away’ invalidate the fact that people without insurance ARE treated in ERs, and don’t have to pay anything.
My brother, working for WalMart, didn’t have insurance but had a heart attack. He was taken to the ER, and inside of a half-hour was in the OR having stents put in. He ended up paying about $150, all in all.
And yes, I believe my mother’s expenses were covered by Medicare. I’m not sure how this offends you, but I don’t see any reason to apologize for it.
I’m not suggesting the government NOT provide better health care. Please read what I wrote above – nowhere did I suggest that. But bureacratic thinking tends to think in terms of bureacratic structures – not solutions.
What we need is something that can be implemented quickly and effectively – and to my thinking it’s a whole lot better to use an infrastructure (quick clinics) and procedures for aid (Unemployment and welfare rolls, WIC rolls) that already exist and can be used to quickly get people help rather than reinvent the wheel – which will take who knows how long and cost who knows how much – and then possibly fail because of bureaucratic inertia and balking at the high costs.
Yes, $50 billion doesn’t seem like much when you’re talking about trillions. But it’s focused on solving the ostensible problem which is making health care available quickly to the people who need it most.
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angienc says:
Sis — are you telling me that “racial profiling” now applies to private citizens (ie Whalen), because guess what, it doesn’t. “Racial profiling” is applicable to the government. Furthermore, your source is full of it — Whalen isn’t Gates’ neighbor — she lives a few towns over from him but happens to work near his house & was walking past on her way to work. Why in the world should she have “recognized” Gates? Is it your position that she should have approached the two men obviously pushing in a front door & asked what they are doing OR is it your premise that she should have ignored it? And even IF Whalen should have recognized Gates how does that justify Gates’s behavior toward the policeman? The policeman wasn’t the one who called the incident in. I swear to all that is good & holy people have lost their minds. When the police come to your door because someone called 911, you cooperate. No other reaction is justifiable, I don’t care what color you are. Especially when you know that you had just been pushing in your front door.
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angienc says:
Sis — that isn’t racial profiling & Whalen wasn’t a “neighbor” — she worked near Gates’ house but lived several towns over. Check your sources better.
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Lynnerkat says:
I have pretty decent insurance for a not exorbitant price or copay- but both have gone up in the past year. But my brother and sister- not so much. I want the insurance that those oh so special congress people have- for everyone. Gates and Crowley probably don’t have to worry about their insurance-like Obama, and can act like asses.
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Violet says:
And yes, I believe my mother’s expenses were covered by Medicare.
Jesus Christ! You really have no clue?
Here was your first comment:
But it sure seems to me like government’s idea of a ‘good fix’ for a social issue is always enormously expensive and exceedingly complex, with ‘improvements’ that are pretty difficult to discern. And I’m not sure massive reform is what we’re in need of at all.
You mean like M…M…something that starts with an M. Can’t remember exactly, some giant government health insurance program that was enacted around 1965 and covered all senior citizens…
This last week, my mother fell and hurt her hip – since she’s 91 with osteoporosis she was immediately shuttled to the hospital. We were there in the ER for about 4 hours, and thankfully, a CAT scan and XRays showed nothing was broken, but they kept her for a couple of nights for observation.
Medicare! That’s it. Medicare.
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JLawson says:
Violet -
“Jesus Christ! You really have no clue?”
Oh, I have a clue. I help my folks handle some of their finances, but my father’s quite bored in their assisted living facility and he insists on handling what he feels he can. And they’ve been married almost 66 years – there’s some things they just don’t want the kids messing with. At least, not yet.
Obama: Reform would cut Medicare waste – MarketWatch — The wasteful spending includes more than $100 billion in “unwarranted” insurance company subsidies to Medicare that do nothing to improve care, Obama said during a nationally televised news conference.
I’m all for reform and cutting out waste and Medicare works pretty well – but it’s gotten enormously expensive and exceedingly complex.
Of course, after 4 decades that’s not surprising. It could stand some work – and if Congress took on the task of getting Medicare reformed and working efficiently, I’d have a lot more confidence they could get a national health care system going that wouldn’t waste a third or more of what’s poured into it.
Any replacement program… well, let’s just say I’ve got doubts, okay? Especially something that’s written up and shoved through so fast that nobody in Congress (including the President) has a chance to read the bill before its voted on.
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Sis says:
Well Sis I am not sure why you are quoting Tami,
##
Because her’s is one of three blogs I read, including RL. And she said it. Is your point I should have quoted any old other place that’s saying it? I don’t read there, but I do read WTS, and I did expect more from Tami. If this is what an intelligent, thoughtful educated Black woman is saying, I know for sure I don’t want to read any others.
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JLawson says:
Lynnerkat -
I want the insurance that those oh so special congress people have – for everyone.
You and me both.
I also want to win the lottery.
However – neither one is likely. The cost of extending what the folks in Washington have to the entire country would break us several times over.
What I’d love to see is have them live with a ‘regular’ insurance plan for about five years. After that point, I think they’d be a bit more ‘eager’ to come up with workable solutions.
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Sis says:
If your 91-yr old mother fell and didn’t break anything, she doesn’t have osteoporosis. Did you make up the rest of the story too?
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Lexia says:
Seems like a good time for “Erewhon” to hit the top of the charts.
You know, that once far-fetched dystopia where a bout of criminal activity was treated with commiseration and hopes that the infected person would soon recover, but the slightest symptom of a cold or the flu resulted in jail time.
“1984″s in full force, we’re living Erewhon – I really hate to think of how soon Swift’s little pamphlet will stop being satire.
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Sis says:
Oh in our culture the greatest censure and contempt is reserved for those who become ill. They should have done this, or taken that, or not done or taken, exercised more, no, less, eaten fat, no, grain. The whole meaning being any illness you contract is your fault.
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Three Wickets says:
Speaking of dystopian societies, how about that 70s sci-fi movie Logan’s Run, where living is plentiful and dandy because everyone is put to sleep on their 30th birthday. Or conversely, James Cameron could do a remake of Titanic and call it the USS Healthcare with all the drama and trimmings around class, excess, being oblivious, the unpredictable, fighting for survival.
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Violet says:
What we need is single payer.
Medicare works well, though its payment system needs to be reformed. What works even better is Tricare, the plan for military families and veterans. Millions of Americans are covered by Tricare and it works great.
Single payer. Single payer.
What’s blocking single payer:
1. The pigs at the trough — the insurance companies, etc. — who will kill their own grandmothers to keep the trough in place; and
2. Republican propaganda, which tricks people into imagining that single payer or indeed any kind of government plan will be more expensive. Jesus! Nothing could be more expensive or less efficient than the crapfest we have now! -
Three Wickets says:
Tami says this..
..how can you work for Harvard Magazine, whose doors are literally a few doors down from Gates’ residence and NOT recognize Henry Louis Gates Jr., and even if you didn’t recognize your neighbor and one of the most famous professors at Harvard, how could you not recognize the black town car parked in front of the house–the luggage–the fact that the driver was dressed in a suit and tie–and how could you add all this up and think that two black men were trying to rob a house IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY? Shame on YOU Lucia Whalen…shame on you.
So, if the black man at the door had been dressed casually and he had not been accompanied by a town car with a driver in suit and tie, it would then have been justifiable for the woman to call 911?? That’s weird logic and the kind of intuitive profiling that cops do all the time anyway. The logic is playing right into the argument against discrimination of that sort, which I believe the cop in question had some particular training in.
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JLawson says:
Sis -
“If your 91-yr old mother fell and didn’t break anything, she doesn’t have osteoporosis. Did you make up the rest of the story too?”
You should see her spine. It started collapsing like a cheap ladder about 7 or 8 years ago. After a number of surgeries to more or less stabilize her vertabrae, she can’s got a proper dowager’s hump and has been diagnosed with full-blown osteoporosis. We fully expected her to have a broken hip – and were damn glad when it wasn’t.
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JLawson says:
Violet -
“Nothing could be more expensive or less efficient than the crapfest we have now!”
Oh, I disagree with you on that – it’s entirely possible to have a system that’s much worse and considerably less effective, and quite likely to boot. The problem occurs when there’s no plan, just a goal.
And I don’t get the feeling from Washington that there IS a plan, or one that might actually work. Instead, it seems like everyone is tossing their pet ideas into the legislative box and then the committess are just shaking everything together hoping the pieces will interlock properly – kind of like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle quickly by shaking the box.
You tell me what the chance is of coming up with a coherent, workable plan trying things that way. Personally, I’ll be surprised to see it happen.
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Sis says:
Vertebral stabilization surgery on a 83-91 year old? Now I know for sure you’re full of it.
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Lynnerkat says:
The VA also does health care well- computerized records that can be accessed from any VA and assignments of PCP’s and appointments that are done quickly.
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Gender2010 says:
“Cop psychology?” generalizing and offensive Violet. I am sorry I read this today.
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sister of ye says:
A well-crafted single plan whould not only save us money, it would also give most of us more choice in caregivers and incidentally take a major commpetitive burden off American businesses.
But aside from that, there’s a fundamental question: What kind of society do we want to be? Are we a people who take care of each other, or one that says “sorry for your ill fortune; now fuck off and die”?
That should be a no-brainer, especially in a country that many assert is Christian. Jesus spoke constantly about caring for the poor and sick. He ruthlessly criticized the uncaring rich and stood up for the working person – “the laborer is worth his wage” was not a justification for huge CEO bonuses.
If those values Jesus taught were important to us, we’d find a way to do it. We decided it was important to go to the moon; we found money and means to do it. We (not me personally) found a huge war machine to be in our interest (even though it’s actually not) that we built one. [Founding Fathers rolling over in graves.]
It’s the “I’ve got mine, fuck you,” take-your-hands-off-my-wallet attitude triumphing. It isn’t personal freedom, or you’d see the same fire and venom opposing wiretaps and intrusive, for-show “security checks” at airports and other places.
When I was a teen and young adult, the news publicized cases of the elderly eating dog food and we thought it a national shame. Letting the old get ill and prematurely die was an attitude for Nazis and other villians. Who knew in 30 years that Scrooge’s “let them die and decrease the surplus population” would be considered a civic virtue?
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sister of ye says:
BTW, just to make clear, I don’t believe you have to be a Christian or a follower of any faith to be a moral, caring person. Just that it’s absurd to claim to be a follower while ignoring what the book you supposedly revere clearly says he taught.
And I do like the picture of certain corporate management going before the guy who overturned the money changers’ tables to explain their fiduciary responsibility to let people die to protect their bottom line.
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BAC says:
Violet, I’m with you regarding single payer health coverage. It’s the only way to cost effectively cover everyone.
Oh, and I need to stop by more often … like the new look!
BAC
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JLawson says:
@sis -
“Vertebral stabilization surgery on a 83-91 year old? Now I know for sure you’re full of it.”
No, I think the person full of it is the one I’m replying to – someone quite rude and unpleasant apparently because my experiences don’t correspond to what you believe.
I’m not a doctor – I’m just a guy trying to deal with what the years have done to my parents. My mother is barely mobile, in a good bit of pain pretty much all the time from her back, and not just from the fall. Drugs help relieve the pain – but she says they ‘stop her up’, and she often won’t use them. I can’t quite figure that – but I sure can’t stuff her pain pills down her throat.
I deal with it – you don’t. I was in the ER on Monday – you weren’t. I saw what I saw – if it doesn’t fit with the narrative you wish to believe, then take it up with reality.
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Alison says:
Well, honestly, I don’t know much more about health care than my own personal experiences, anecdotes from my global friends who have spoken to me about their countries health care systems and a vague belief in nationalized health care.
How to do it? I haven’t the foggiest idea and don’t know what to think about Congress’s plan.
I’ve just been starting to read about the single payer systems. Does anyone know what countries operate under that system? And then there is this idea at Femisex, in regard to taxing health care benefits.
http://www.femisex.com/content.....mment-1726
And then there is the way they do it in Australia. It’s private, but affordable. How does that work?
But what I DO know is that the United States of Americans are way too new to thinking about nationalized health care to really understand what the hell they want out of it. You are right, Violet. We need to be talking about this more.
As is, I feel like we are rushing toward the finish line without a clue as to what the prize is.
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Branjor says:
***No, but neither does a ’story’ of ‘people turned away’ invalidate the fact that people without insurance ARE treated in ERs, and don’t have to pay anything.***
Don’t have to pay anything? Really? I have no insurance and was treated in an ER. The treatment consisted of putting a few drops in my eye. The cost was a little over $1000 and I had to pay it. I am not Medicaid eligible.
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quixote says:
Your idea about the reality show, Violet? It’d be great except . . . bit too real, y’know? Who wants that?
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Alison says:
Branjor,
I am for nationalized health care but it is true – some people without insurance go to the ER and don’t pay a thing. I have worked with undocumented workers for over 10 years and I know that this is one of the few ways they can afford medical care – by showing up in the emergency room. And they often do not pay.
IMHO this is a ridiculous scenario. By not giving them some sort of regular coverage this scenario turns even minor complaints into “an emergency”. This is very expensive and something that we all end up paying for in the end.
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Kiuku says:
I showed up in the Emergency room in Jordan with a broken ankle. It was quick and efficient. Cast, X-Rays, dr. visit, and pain medication cost under $50.
My friend was not surprised. She went to see a doctor and got several tests done, THAT DAY, in the SAME OFFICE, such as ultrasound for less than $10. Not only was it efficient, they are also known for having really good doctors. You could argue that it just seems cheap because in America we have a different wage expectation than the average Jordanian, but they still have a quick an efficient program as well as insurance.
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janicen says:
{{{{{angienc}}}}} I know you’re not here right now, but I miss you.
Re: the reality show, Morgan Spurlock did an episode on “Thirty Days” about a couple who both worked full-time earning minimum wage and what their lives were like especially when one of them needed some healthcare. It was a real eye opener.
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anna says:
The emergency room is for emergencies, not check-ups. So people who can’t pay don’t get check-ups, don’t get preventive care, have to wait until it becomes an emergency and maybe by then its too late. There are plenty of poor people who could never afford to see a doctor and just dropped dead of a heart attack one day, when if they’d gotten diagnosed a few yrs back they’d still be alive.
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Toonces says:
The true American religion is the worship of the almighty dollar. Along with that comes a deep attachment to the American caste/class system. If we let everyone have healthcare, there would be poor people getting access to the same care as worthy people who have money. That’s the real ick factor for a lot of people, IMO.
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Kiuku says:
I regret not getting all the healthcare I needed while overseas. How sad is that? I was even in the military. And all the doctors and visits and running around I had to do in the military I can only imagine that they would find out what was wrong with me within a week, in Jordan.
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Joan says:
Where are these ERs where you don’t pay? The few times I’ve used an ER they practically went through my purse. They would not let me see anyone until I had successfully proved to them that I has some means and it seemed clear that they would hound me for payment, forever if necessary. I know it’s supposed to be a law but you have to know that before you go because they sure aren’t going to tell you.
Also,I agree that Congress is making a bad situation worse with the lame plan they are formulating. It will just put off the needed change to single-payer for that much longer. If what they are proposing is the best they can do, they should just table it until they come to their senses or are replaced. Maybe extend Medicare downward and expand Medicaid in the meantime. The way they are heading, everyone will end up mandated into buying private insurance that is too expensive and inadequate. -
Briar says:
Story-dominated debate is dangerous. You have to be careful about *who* is telling the story. Just putting a story out isn’t enough: we all know that the teller makes the tale. Back in the 1980s, Labour tried to make the underfunded National Health Service and the inequities generated by private medicine (yes, just as with education, we have private facilities for the rich few, private facilities that privilege these few, and which our supposedly social democratic system works hard to perpetuate) the “story”. It became “The saga of Jennifer’s ear” if I remember correctly and it got totally twisted by the Tory-supporting, capitalist-funded media. While names had been changed to protect the children in the story as initially told, before long the Murdoch press and others had ferreted out the “real” story, and surprise, surprise, it featured a fractured family with a feuding husband and wife and a disagreement as to whether “Jennifer’s” (true) story should be told. Before long the simple message (that children dependent on the NHS waited longer for treatment than children whose parents could buy private health care) was twisted a myriad different ways by a media that didn’t want that story told powerfully. So they told other ones instead. And it worked – people voted for the party that promised them immediate health care for their children. Er. If they had very large sums of money available, that is. But presumably that is what they wanted, even if they were dirt-poor and dependent on the dear old NHS like the rest of us. (Not that New Labour – note the PR-spun rebranding – has turned out to be very different, as much in thrall to capital as the Tories as they are. And of course I realise that in the entrepreneurial US, providing opportunities for the few to get the most while the most get very little if anything passes for democracy and equality and freedom, and good health is therefore not a human right there.)
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RKMK says:
Where are these ERs where you don’t pay?
Canada. 0;)
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Aspen says:
Where are these ERs where you don’t pay?
They (US hospitals) will try to may you pay as any other debt collection process would. But I imagine that someone with no money, assets, or income, and/or a load of debt/verge of bankruptcy may not end up paying simply because there would be nothing to squeeze of of her/him.
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Sameol says:
Word. There are certain limited circumstances under which hospitals are required by law to treat patients without insurance, but they still bill and do everything they possibly can to collect.
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octogalore says:
It seemed clear to me that Sis wasn’t quoting WTS appreciatively!
Also, Whalen apparently was Portuguese, not white, and didn’t identify Gates as Black, according to her lawyer. So the WTS quote was inaccurate, as well as offensive. Disappointing, as I typically like the WTS blog.
I agree with Gender2010 about “cop psychology” being a generalization. I’ve been in situations inviting bad treatment by police officers, and I know both gender and race profiling exists. However, I have respect for the job and know personally two police officers (one female, a Lieutenant) whose ethics I admire greatly.
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Level Best says:
Sis, I hope you come back as a commenter. I look for you the most.
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Branjor says:
Actually, the Portuguese are white. They’re just not so creamy and fair.
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octogalore says:
Branjor: that’s true and I stand corrected. But now we’re getting into technical census definitions and not how she identified. Given her background, she may indeed have identified, and have been identified by others, as being a different racial category from “white.” It’s hard to know.
But the more important point is that she evidently didn’t mention Gates being black, she wasn’t a neighbor, and had no reason to recognize Gates’ car. So the WTS accusation is inaccurate and unfair.
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Kiuku says:
I think the problem with the health care system in America, and the barriers to achieving viable health care in our nation, has to do with actual contempt for the sick, as someone above highlighted.
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Jackie says:
I must admit that I am fascinated by the whole Gates/Crowley/Obama debacle. During the campaign I could never decide if Obama was brilliantly Machiavellian or a blithering idiot. Mulling over what he said at the press conference, I’m still not sure. If he said what he did on purpose, knowing the ensuing and inevitable uproar would overshadow any further coverage of the healthcare fiasco for a long time, and that that would somehow work to his advantage, he’s brilliant. If he was simply speaking off the cuff and from the heart and did not realize the effect his remarks would have, his idiocy is confirmed. Maybe that would explain why Obama travels with an envoy more than twice the size of our last President’s – damage control. Would that also mean he is an even bigger buffoon? Good lord!
