Toronto Star: Why Americans can't talk about health care

Why Americans can't talk about health care
August 15, 2009


BUFFALO, N.Y.–Leo Astyk and Bob Smith are slumped into old chairs just inside the garage door of Best Automotive Service, the repair shop Smith has run for the past 23 years.

It's a broiling, sticky day and business is slow. Astyk, a retired steamfitter, is trying to pry loose the broken blade of a utility knife as Smith wipes his hand with an oil rag.

Everything about their body language speaks of a long friendship, guy friendship, the kind that doesn't require a lot more than wordless ease in each other's company.

In more than three decades, they've never had a major fight about anything. Until now.

When it comes to the U.S. health-care system, they might as well be on different planets. And the raw kernel of their dispute just happens to reveal why American debate about health-care reform has become so primal, so reflexively nasty, as if nothing less than the soul of the nation were at stake. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/681663

Union boy Astyk, with union provided coverage, is "anti-big government".

Translation: I got mine, screw you.

How many union members voted for Reagan?

The lucky people who have reasonably adequate health insurance or are old enough to receive Medicare seem to believe the uninsured are illegal aliens or people who refuse to work (old white people's code for African Americans and Hispanics). It's all about the "other".

I have catastrophic coverage and I am always worried about possible illness and it's cost. I have worked hard all my life and yet my 82 year old father rants on about "those people" who want to make him pay for their health care. When I tell him "they" are people like me he gets upset and tunes me out.

If John Edwards were our president (forgetting for a moment the reason why he wouldn't have been elected) they would oppose universal healthcare. They opposed it when Hillary Clinton tried it in 1993. Or is the reason they opposed it then was because of sexism?

There are just visceral reactions to the topic, and we really haven't had the healthcare debate in this country to deal with those reactions before this year.

The haves think that the have nots are all or mostly illegal aliens or blacks. I have heard many people state this emphatically. I bunch of entitled white people simply hate everyone who isn't like them and they believe they are trying to steal their country and money and health care.

anyone trying to get their hands on rich peoples' disproportionate benefits incurs their wrath.

most people with health insurance seem to think their plan is better than average and that a "socialized" plan means it will be replaced with something that by definition is average. they don't want to lose their place in the rat race, and the vast majority of people who ARE "ahead" in the rat race think it's because of some great individual achievement or merit of theirs, rather than their status/class markers such as skin color.

they feel they're in their nice little castle and someone's laying seige to take their precious ppo plan away. they don't can about the skin color of the barbarians at the gate.

any actual racism is merely a tool the super-rich use to motivate the masses.

Most of the health care opponents see it as communism or something close to same.

That's really pretty much it. That's why the term "socialized medicine" is such a buzzword in the United States.

People hardly ever talk about the value of nurse practitioners,
who can do much of the work an MD can do. But half the states
won't allow them to practice alone. A waste of talent.

People hardly ever talk about the inaccessibility of doctors,
even though the majority of people at ERs would not be there
if their doctor's officer were open on weekends, or more accessible,
or maybe if they could see a nurse practitioner.

And here an important study showed that most people with hypertension
do not have it well controlled, even though they have insurance.
(Reference from first sentence in Introduction,in
http://hyper.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/40/4/464)
But who talks about this serious problem? Maybe we need
community hypertension clinics, and discussions on television.
Who knows? But we ought to talk about it. What we have now hasn't been working so well.

So we really have plenty of information to get out there.
We've barely started.

(Important note: in Canada they have Cliniques Sans Rendez-Vous,
or Drop-In Clinics. A nice idea, rarely mentioned.)