I am publishing here a presentation I was invited to give by Representative John Conyers of Michigan for the Congressional Black Caucus Leadership Conference in Washington DC on September 22, 2005. I am proud to have been among such distinguished panelists as Congressman John Conyers, Congresswoman Hilda Solis, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Dr. Olveen Carrasquillo, Dr. Quentin Young and others.
National Health Care: A Human Right,
Not a Privilege
Today we've heard the statistics, telling that over 45 million men, women and children are uninsured, and millions more are underinsured because of our current profit-driven healthcare. In 2005, in this rich nation of ours, it's unconscionable for any person to feel: I can't afford to go to the doctor. I can't afford to pay for the medicine that my child or wife desperately needs. On a TV program last week I heard a man say "my six year old daughter has cancer, and my insurance only pays for part of the treatment. With a roofer's salary-- what can I do?"
Higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments are encouraging people who are in what is called the Middle Class to delay seeking health care; when they finally do get care they are often so ill that the costs can be astronomical. The leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is unpaid medical bills. Just last week, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a study showing that:
The average annual premiums for family coverage grew 9.2 percent since last year to $10,880; [and the] average worker's share of the premiums was $2,713 in 2005. And USA Today describes it this way:
"Job-based health insurance - the central pillar of America's health insurance system is beginning to crumble. Just 60 percent of businesses offered health insurance in 2005... and some employees who can no longer afford insurance...go without. "
Meanwhile, the Corporate Research Group reported that "in 2004, managed care profits increased 33%." And the way to increase profits is by limiting care, raising prices and making you pay more; and pharmaceutical corporations also made billions from the misfortunes of others.
I've seen a man lose his leg because he couldn't afford antibiotics to treat his foot ulcer. A few years ago I attended the funeral of a 14-year-old girl in the Bronx, who died when her HMO refused to do an inexpensive blood test that would have shown that what she was suffering from was not the flu--as her parents were told--but a perforated pancreas. Why did this happen?--because her mother had the temerity to take her daughter to the emergency room without calling the HMO first. This little girl was REAL, not "anecdotal", to use the language of the insurance companies. As Martin Luther King Jr. said so powerfully: "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhumane."
As we hear pharmaceutical giants singing the praises of the new fake Medicare Prescription Plan, it is inhumane that we have millions of our senior citizens with limited incomes paying for expensive medications. During the previous five years, the prices of prescription drugs have risen exponentially and continue climbing.
But according to the "2004 Economic Report of the President" the U.S. health care is doing just fine. Never mind the huge expense, the low life expectancy, and the high infant mortality: it's a market-based system, so it must be good!
For healthcare to be based on the idea that it's all right to make money from the illnesses of people is hideous and unethical. In a class of 1968 the philosopher Eli Siegel, founder of the education Aesthetic Realism, explained the root cause of the crisis we are in today when he stated that profit-driven health care is unethical because it is "based on contempt for people." He added:
I've seen a man lose his leg because he couldn't afford antibiotics to treat his foot ulcer. A few years ago I attended the funeral of a 14-year-old girl in the Bronx, who died when her HMO refused to do an inexpensive blood test that would have shown that what she was suffering from was not the flu--as her parents were told--but a perforated pancreas. Why did this happen?--because her mother had the temerity to take her daughter to the emergency room without calling the HMO first. This little girl was REAL, not "anecdotal", to use the language of the insurance companies. As Martin Luther King Jr. said so powerfully: "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhumane."
As we hear pharmaceutical giants singing the praises of the new fake Medicare Prescription Plan, it is inhumane that we have millions of our senior citizens with limited incomes paying for expensive medications. During the previous five years, the prices of prescription drugs have risen exponentially and continue climbing.
But according to the "2004 Economic Report of the President" the U.S. health care is doing just fine. Never mind the huge expense, the low life expectancy, and the high infant mortality: it's a market-based system, so it must be good!
For healthcare to be based on the idea that it's all right to make money from the illnesses of people is hideous and unethical. In a class of 1968 the philosopher Eli Siegel, founder of the education Aesthetic Realism, explained the root cause of the crisis we are in today when he stated that profit-driven health care is unethical because it is "based on contempt for people." He added:
"The idea of people worried about their health and worried about money is barbarous. It's ego corruption."
He showed that once you are after profit you can't be too interested in what people deserve, what they feel; to do so will limit your ability to make money from them.
A system in which patients are seen in terms of money and not what they feel encourages ill will in everyone working in it. Too often healthcare providers resort to coldness to protect oneself from "feeling too much." I, like many doctors, began my career wanting to be useful, but I also made the mistake of seeing a patient in terms of what he or she could afford to pay, and as not a full, feeling human being.
A system in which patients are seen in terms of money and not what they feel encourages ill will in everyone working in it. Too often healthcare providers resort to coldness to protect oneself from "feeling too much." I, like many doctors, began my career wanting to be useful, but I also made the mistake of seeing a patient in terms of what he or she could afford to pay, and as not a full, feeling human being.
I remember the turmoil I felt the first time I had to charge a woman with no health insurance. After treating her for a foot infection, she asked: "How much?" I went from feeling "She shouldn't have to pay a penny!" to justifying myself by thinking "I studied hard, and have many loans; besides someone else may charge her more." I had no clue how to make sense of these conflicting feelings, and my solution for easing the nervousness I felt was by becoming cold and distant to the people I had hoped to benefit.
Through my study of Aesthetic Realism, I began to ask the question Eli Siegel said is central in ethics: "What does a person deserve by being a person?" The honest answering of this question, I know first hand, is the means to see a person with REAL feeling; as real as my own. And when we see a person this way, wanting to be useful will be the driving force in our hearts, not profiting from their illness.
This question is more important than ever after the Katrina disaster. People around this country saw black babies in New Orleans crying for food; we heard the cries of an elderly woman begging for water. People were shocked--usefully shocked--throughout this land by seeing the horrible poverty we've allowed to continue--and grow--in this country. What do they all deserve as fellow human beings? They deserve good housing, food, good education, they deserve jobs, and yes they deserve a national health insurance, where everyone is covered equally.
The Katrina disaster can become a turning point. It should be used to fight for just and equitable health care, because what we have is failing. As William Custer, director of the Center for Health Services Research in Atlanta said recently:
"What we are seeing is an unraveling of the way we finance health care in the United States....It is coming apart at the edges... The levees are breaking. "
A health care disaster has slowly been occurring for years. To continue the current patchwork approach to health care reform is tantamount to trying to cover an unstable, crumbling levee with your little finger. This should not be a political issue any longer, it's an ethical issue.
Through my study of Aesthetic Realism, I began to ask the question Eli Siegel said is central in ethics: "What does a person deserve by being a person?" The honest answering of this question, I know first hand, is the means to see a person with REAL feeling; as real as my own. And when we see a person this way, wanting to be useful will be the driving force in our hearts, not profiting from their illness.
This question is more important than ever after the Katrina disaster. People around this country saw black babies in New Orleans crying for food; we heard the cries of an elderly woman begging for water. People were shocked--usefully shocked--throughout this land by seeing the horrible poverty we've allowed to continue--and grow--in this country. What do they all deserve as fellow human beings? They deserve good housing, food, good education, they deserve jobs, and yes they deserve a national health insurance, where everyone is covered equally.
The Katrina disaster can become a turning point. It should be used to fight for just and equitable health care, because what we have is failing. As William Custer, director of the Center for Health Services Research in Atlanta said recently:
"What we are seeing is an unraveling of the way we finance health care in the United States....It is coming apart at the edges... The levees are breaking. "
A health care disaster has slowly been occurring for years. To continue the current patchwork approach to health care reform is tantamount to trying to cover an unstable, crumbling levee with your little finger. This should not be a political issue any longer, it's an ethical issue.
If Congress wants to solve this crisis, it should vote for Conyers' proposal for a U.S. National Health Insurance Act: which is the extension of Medicare, that truly American--truly red, white and blue program--to every person in this nation.