?The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.?
I can’t be doing with most makeover shows, particularly the US ones which always seem to go too far, but I have to admit to being rather fond of Extreme House Makeover even though it’s one of the crassest examples of gross consumer overconsumption ( since when does a 3 year old need a chill-out room or a plasma screen?) – ever.
That’s because over the course of a number of programmes I’ve seen the cast go from plastic, airhead celebrity wannabe’s to something resembling real, likeable human beings, by their close contact with the extraordinary generosity of ordinary people. You might even say they’d been humbled by it. So I can’t say these shows are all bad. Say about 80/20.
A lot of the people the show changes houses for are disabled, have life-threatening illness and are very short of money because of their contact with the crippling costs of treatment and surgery. I was finacially crippled by it myself by the US healthcare system – even though I had excellent group insurance coverage, surgery in the US put me 40,000 dollars in the hole and drove me to Chapter 11, though now even that meagre respite has been taken away,
The second system I’ve experienced, the NHS, is free – or at least you pay national insurance contributions and tax all your life to pay for it. But I never actually got the care I needed from an overstretched and underfunded renal unit, and because of Labour’s stealth attempt at privatisation of the NHS, under the euphemistic cloaking device ‘Choice’, it’s only going to get worse. Hospitals are laying off staff as I type, and the NHS Chief Executive, Sir Nigel Crisp, has had to take the fall for New Labour’s failures and resign retire.
The third system is where I’m being treated now, the Netherlands. It has its many quirks – bedside manner for instance, what’s that? – but I can’t complain about the quality and speed of my hospital treatment. My chances of kidney transplant here are vastly improved, for instance, even though I’m not a great candidate for surgery. In the UK I would have no chance. A question of priorities, you see.
I’ve just learned that I will soon be having surgery that will not cure me, but which has the potential to slow the my kidneys’ deterioration long enough to prepare for a transplant, and hopefully stop me from having to start dialysis. This, at one of the best teaching hospitals in Europe, everything paid for by ziekonfonds, which costs 98 euro a month. I just cannot imagine what my situation would be were I in the US.
Yes, I can. I’d be dead, because I wouldn’t be able to get insurance at all.
All of which lengthy preamble brings me to the point: this post from Healthy Policy via Ezra Klein.
I can’t help but put myself in the place of the desperate applicants they reject.
March 07, 2006
The Deserving Sick
(cross posted from tpm)
I second Graham.
ABC’s new reality show, Miracle Workers is the wrong take on health care. The show, following in Extreme Home Makeover’s footsteps, creates a construction that Bad Things happen to people, and a choice handful will be lucky enough to come under the lens of millions and deemed worthy of assistance. It’s a revival of the notion of the deserving poor — this family?s house is crumbling from foundation to roof, but because the mother also rescues turtles from the highway, they’ve done something to deserve help.
But the Miracle Worker conception of the deserving poor is much more insidious. As the show sets out to:
give ordinary people who do not have the network, access to the necessary medical community or in some cases the resources to these procedures. Their seemingly overwhelming medical problems will be taken in hand by a renowned team of medical specialists. The patients? lives will be transformed before viewers? eyes as the professionals employ cutting-edge medical technology to heal those who need it most.
It?s taking the uninsured and making them special cases to nurture and heal. It?s ignoring the fact that 46 million people are in the same place as the two patients featured every week on this show.
It would be prohibitively expensive to rebuild every crumbling home across the nation, but the added cost of covering the uninsured is quite small. There?s a variety of ways to go about it; some involving small changes, others monumental shifts. But this problem isn?t uncurable; it?s not a fact of life (or doesn?t have to be). It?s fixable. This show could really make leaps and bounds for health care if it discussed these cases in the context of what they are: the lucky few of an addressable problem. Every person in this nation deserves access to this kind of care, and there?s any number of ways we can go about ensuring that. We should take that joy and hope the sick enjoy when they get adequate care, and use that as reason to cover everyone.
Instead Americans will blissfully sit in front of their television, eyes a little wet as the ?miracles? progress, little thought given to the rest of the uninsured and how they?ll never see doctors like this.
March 07, 2006 in Health Insurance Permalink
Tags: Healthcare Health InsuranceUS UK Netherlands
Quote GK Chesterton
