"How would American cultural life be if so many of our talented and creative people weren't worn out by their day jobs with benefits? Would vapid, commando starlets still rule our cultural discourse, or could we become a culture defined by ideas instead of the easy sell?" Rednecked Mother Every single day, my mother gives thanks for the fact that she has health insurance। Due to the fact she is not a landed immigrant into Canada (that's a long story ) she is not eligible for the free public health care. Fortunately , she has excellent medical insurance which covers 100% of her cost of treatment. The insurance company people are lovely to deal with and maybe I am naive, but I get a sense that they really CARE about my mother and are doing everything they can to facilitate her treatment at a top notch medical facility like Roswell Park . Yesterday she was an hour with her physical therapist going over all the various options available to her for lymphedema. Her outstanding , compassionate therapist (all the people in that clinic are great ) has managed in a little over a week to get the swelling in her arm down by 97% . This is no small achievement.
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the new Michael Moore movie Sicko. This movie cleverly satirizes the national disgrace that 45 million people in U.S have no medical insurance. There's also a huge number of people that are under-insured and stand to lose their homes and assets if they ever find themselves dealing with a major illness in their family . There are the obvious points to be made about the fact that America is the only industrialized country in the world that fails to address the health care needs of its citizens , but what I find a fascinating argument is how potentially the national character of the country could change if it tended to its most vulnerable citizens .
Just imagine if a writer , an artist an athlete could freely work without concerns about being completely wiped out by a major health catastrophe. Just imagine if my blogging friend Liz over at "As The Tumour Turns" was able to get proper health care .
"try being over 50, self-employed, low-income, with several preexisting conditions, and see if you can afford the skyrocketing premiums. And then there's the whole mess of being underinsured. Even if I'd been able to afford to hang on to the shitty little health insurance policy I had managed to qualify and pay through the nose for for five years until 18 months before I got sick, it wouldn't have covered more than maybe an eighth of my cancer expenses. I would still have ended up bankrupt."
Liz needs a few bucks to get through . If you are in the market for some interesting reads, check out her business website Deep Inferno Trading Post .
Instead of feeling glad and fortunate that we enjoy a completely socialized , standardized health care system in Canada, I am finding myself "sicko " about the whole awful situation in this country. Roswell Park is not in the best neighbourhood of Buffalo. You don't have to drive too far to see grinding poverty , broken down houses and teenage mothers pushing strollers. What happens to their kids when if they have appendicitis ? What about the mom who has diabetes or the grandma with breast cancer? Even if you are fortunate to be middle class and have some sort of medical insurance, the co-pays and deductions might wipe you out .
There's something seriously wrong with the national psyche of a country that can wage a useless four year invasion of Iraq , sink billions of dollars into a campaign that was doomed to failure right from the beginning and not provide the basics of good health care for its citizens. Yes, I am incredibly grateful that my mother is receiving the finest care that America can offer , but we are both haunted by the faceless, nameless other women with the same diagnosis of mum that may be on the verge of financial ruin because they had the bad luck to get sick.
The Americans need to stop this ghoulish, disgusting obsession with celebrities and start focusing on a truly national debate about the sorry state of access to health care in this country .
I highly doubt that Fox News and CNN are the ones to do the job ! It will take millions of citizens rising up to demand a better deal from the government . There are some hopeful signs . FOr example, I aplaud the efforts in California to establish Healthy Families which provides medical insurance to all children who do not have health insurance and do not qualify for the public insurance medi-cal .
Innovative programs like that need to be available to every citizen.
I'm off my soap box now . Thank you for listening to my vent and good night !
