Healthcare?

I have been busy. As we prepare to move back to New York, the amount of house painting necessary is something like a long, long walk. I enjoy house painting, for it is such a clear and tangible activity, though within reason. too much is too much. My time away from the internet was great though to be honest I don't really feel like writing about it at the moment. Instead, a timely letter I wrote a month or so past to my Representatives in New York:

June 17, 2009

Senator (s)~

Over the last few years, I have become increasingly concerned about health care in the United States. Celebrating one’s thirty-sixth birthday ushers in some thought about wellbeing and mortality (for better or worse.) My wife and I also had our first child fifteen months past, and this has brought the issue to the forefront of my thinking.

The reason I feel compelled to write is simple: my wife and I have been living in Canada for a brief while, using “traveler’s insurance.” I graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute last year with an MFA, and though I spent a good deal of effort, I did not acquire a teaching position for the fall. My wife is an independent contractor and therefore we are reliant on her membership to the Author's Guild for insurance, which simply means that we have to pay out of pocket. The cheapest option we have been able to find (which may not be very good healthcare) is just over six hundred dollars a month, with a five thousand dollar deductible.

I’m sure you can agree that for a middle class family, that is a rather steep amount. We live quite simply: no television, shopping for clothes only when necessary, one car, one $20.00/month cell phone, no debt, etc. and yet we will be incapable of saving any money due to health insurance. So as we have been discussing options (one of which incidentally has been remaining in Canada…don’t for an instant believe that the nonsense you hear on CNN about Canadian healthcare being a mess is true. Yes, there can be long wait times for non-terminal illness, and yes it can be difficult to find a family doctor in rural areas, but it’s FREE! And the care itself is excellent. I’m afraid any discussion of Canadian healthcare is for another letter).

Anyway, it seems absurd to have made the decision to live in a place like Troy, where we have to sacrifice many aspects of community that we would like (though Troy is getting better) so that we can keep a low overhead (low mortgage, etc.) and have a lifestyle we want (lots of time with family, reading, cooking, etc…). Then to have a health insurance cost that approaches our mortgage. I ask hypothetically, “how can people in this country be expected to pull themselves from the financial ruin of the economic meltdown, if we are under the thumb of such expensive healthcare?”

Last week we watched the documentary film, SICKO by Michael Moore. I should make clear that I do not much care for Michael Moore’s films. I may agree with his overall theses, but I find him despicable in the same way that I find Rush Limbaugh despicable; both entirely blind to other opinion and scientific or statistical logic. While the film was poorly executed, namely with regard to the fact that it is amazingly biased, and lacking in data to make his point (it ultimately strikes me as an opinion piece) it did bring some questions to mind:

Why for example, is one of the wealthiest nations in the developed world, (the U.S.) stuck with such a miserable healthcare system? Why do France and the United Kingdom, and Canada, and possibly every other nation in Europe have such better systems? I have an answer for this and unfortunately, it is one that politicians generally do not like: greed. (I know this is reductive and perhaps even indicative of Moore’s line of thinking, but bear with me.)

I believe that until the corporations are pulled from the healthcare industry, it will likely never change much. Why should healthcare be a money making industry? Shouldn’t it be non-profit? Why should anyone other than people directly involved in health, ie; doctors, nurses, pharmacists, medical technicians, etc. be making any money off of healthcare? Is there not a strange conflict of interest?

I realize that pulling the plug on these large corporations overnight is not only unlikely, but unrealistic, as so many healthcare industry lobbyists are lining the pockets of people in Washington. And I also understand this. I would prefer to say that I don’t but I do. They all have families too, etc., etc., etc. We just have to look historically at human behavior to see that greed is somehow written into our genetic DNA. But as much as I understand greed and am willing to give these folks a bit of breathing room, I just don’t know how the people steering the ship sleep at night. I’m afraid I find it utterly inhumane, and I would wager that if the CEOs of these big companies had to sit in a room with poor people who have no insurance and say to them, “I’m sorry Mrs.________ but we will not be able to operate on your cancer because you don’t have insurance, and you will be dead in two months so enjoy these last few weeks with your children…” that things would change.

The smaller injustices are just as deplorable. Last month aunt fell in her house and broke her wrist. She has been having great trouble with her arm since, and just discovered that her insurance company will not pay for ANY of it. Not the x-rays, not the cast, rehab, nothing. Why? Because she fell in her house. They say that it is the responsibility of her home owner’s insurance. How absurd. Oh yes, and her husband is an MD.

I of course feel entirely voiceless as I listen to the good folks at NPR every day, talking about the forthcoming (potential) changes and so I write to you. My long (ish) letter here is simply a plea to ask you to urge other congressmen and senators to look at France and England and Canada and figure out a way for EVERYONE in this great country to have exceptional, free, healthcare. Fight for it. Be my voice. Be the voice of all of the other people who didn’t sit down this evening to write you a letter. Don’t allow people like myself and my wife, both of whom are contributing so much to our communities as artists and educators, to choose to live in another country because the healthcare system of America is failing us. I feel as though for the first time in my adult life, the political climate in the United States is open to the possibility of some sea changes, but only if we stand up for what we believe is right.

Wouldn’t it be great, to look back in thirty years, and know that you were one of the people who brought the United States into a place where the rest of the world look to us with admiration for how well we cared for and ailing and our sick? Please do something.

Thank you for your time.

Posted by jeff pitcher at August 7, 2009 05:14 AM

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