Bleary eyed and beat after landing in London at the end of August, I saw an odd thing at Heathrow: signs posted everywhere with advice for how to avoid catching the flu. Also, vials of hand sanitizers were placed in strategic places, like where you take the luggage carts back. The same signs were in the Tube stations and other public places, along with lots of squirters of alcohol gels.
My destination was the British religious Woodstock. The Greenbelt Arts and Religion Festival at Cheltenham Spa’s famous steeplechase race track attracted 20,000 progressive religious types, mostly Christian. They camped in a huge horse pasture, gathered to hear great music, watch amazing dance, listen to prominent speakers (including Rev. Gene Robinson the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire), and eat county-fair food, British style. I tried the mashed peas, a beef pie, and an “American Cookie,” all of which tasted about like you’d suspect. Lots of strategically placed hand sanitizers.
Turns out the Archbishop of Canterbury had issued a swine flu advisory. The 15,000 of us who showed up Sunday morning to hear a Palestinian Muslim, Israeli Jew, and Bosnian Muslim talk about peace and human rights were instructed on special procedures for worship. No kiss of peace, just an elbow bump of peace, which turned out to be kinda fun in its silliness.
The last night, the religious counter culture types celebrated a Grand Ball. They showed up in every imaginable kind of dress, including used wedding gowns, most accessorized with Wellies (very colorful rubber boots). The host wore mid-calf magenta Wellies into which he stuffed the pants of his fancy tux. Everyone seem to have abandoned all flu cautions, embracing and dancing with abandon. Hope no one got sick.
I first thought the flu warnings were paranoid overkill. Then I thought about it some more. I almost never get colds, but I am very susceptible to flu and always get a flu shot. If I got this H1N1 thing, it could be bad for me.
The British health care system wants people to stay healthy, so they saturated public places with flu warnings. The ubiquitous signs were sensible instructions, rather than alarmist warnings. I found myself using the gel dispensers just because they were there.
The U.S. health care system is fundamentally unethical in two ways. It profits from people’s misfortunes. If people have the bad luck to get really, really sick, from something very expensive to treat, the companies pass on that bad luck on to others by raising rates or by finding a reason to refuse your care or drop you. And why, in God’s name, is health care related to employment? If you are unemployed and get sick, too bad. I know a man whose beloved 30-something nephew was without health care between a job helping poor people in Africa, where it was sunny, and a U.S. job. He waited until his new health insurance kicked in to have a skin lesion checked on the skin of his leg. He is now dying of advanced melanoma.
There is no way to make a for-profit health care system ethical. We need a lot more than health care reform. We need a revolution. It is an outrage that Congress refused even to discuss the possibility of a single payer, nonprofit system. Now, even a tiny possibility of a public option also might be doomed—killed by a campaign against it that vested interests waged. They know if we had one, their hegemony and profits would be threatened.
I currently pay more for health care than I pay in taxes, not even counting co-pays, dental care, optical, and other things not covered by my current insurance. I would gladly pay double my current taxes for a health care system that took care of all health related services for everyone, no matter what is wrong with them.
I’d even be willing to make do with elbow bumps instead of hugs.
Rita is one of America’s most distinguished theologians. Her book (co-authored with Rebecca Parker) Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of this World for Crucifixion and Empire is a world-changer. Rita’s scholarly achievements are matched by a commitment to political transformation. I am blessed to call her a friend. Welcome to the Canyon, Rita.
You’ve put your finger on the exact design flaw of the health care system in American.
It’s driven by the notion that people are cost or profit centers rather than patients.
After an academic year spent in a Texas university (as a teacher) I suspect that the problem is a cultural one: Americans believe that if you are ill, that’s your problem and ultimately, your look-out.
Europeans believe it is a social issue and solidarity will kick in, with many differences indeed (in the United Kingdom, if you are overweight, you have a reduced priority for surgery; in Hungary if you do not pay extra doctors and nurses, who live on miserable salaries, you won’t get much assistance; in Italy you wait months for surgery on the public system-if you go private you wait 48 hours, etc.).
Still, over here in Europe, people won’t be left to die because they haven’t got money. Over there it happens every day.
This is why there is no other option than the public “option”. Health is not a market, whatever mad Republican lobbysts tell you…
Lots of luck!
“There is no way to make a for-profit health care system ethical.”
I’ll never understand why there are two sides to this issue. I know the money, power, control, status quo, etc…but why those things.
I cannot quite find the place in my heart/head for those who stand strong to deny a doctor or treatment for their own family or friends.
Thanks for posting Rita
Margie, I agree. I cannot believe people want to deny poor women, women in the military and women on Indian reservations reproductive services, to call domestic violence a pre-existing condition to withhold care, and to tolerate people getting rich from letting people die.
Here’s what I think Congress should do. Take all controls off private health care insurance and care. Let them do all they want: deny all the care they want and try to profit. BUT ALSO expand Congress’s health care system to create a robust public option and see where the competition takes us. I’d rather that than the current proposal.
Here in Canada we are outraged at the self-serving arguments used to prevent a universal health care system in the US.