The “Price” of Health

 I’ve spent far too much time over these past months trying to understand why the current administration does not seem to understand (or care about?) basic health care facts:

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  1. All people get sick and injured over their lives; all people feel pain; human experience is unpredictable and none of us knows when disaster will strike; and all (or at least most) people try hard to manage their pain, disabilities and illnesses so that they can continue to engage in the normal activities of daily life.
  2. All people need the help of medical experts in order to minimize the damage caused by disease and injury. In the twenty-first century, expert help and procedures and remedies involve substantial expenses.
  3. Even with careful planning, most Americans cannot save up enough money to cover these expenses, especially in cases of long-term or chronic health challenges.
  4. Health “insurance” that requires people to guess what care they will need (so-called “more choice for the consumer”) presumes that people can prophesy the future and / or avoid all illness and injury.
  5. When members of our communities cannot access appropriate health care there are consequences for everyone: Infectious diseases spread; people miss work and vital businesses and services become understaffed; production drops; kids fall behind in school; and some people turn to illicit substances (including alcohol) in order to self-medicate.
  6. See point #1.

These points are consistent with what most people observe and experience in their own families and communities and should, one might think, serve as the basis for health care policy. That, however, is not the case. As regarding many other issues, the current administration invokes an alternative set of “facts” regarding the nature of health and health care. These “facts” do not tend to be articulated in a coherent statement, yet they do emerge as a sort of sub-text in a variety of situations.

Ebola Winners and Losers

Last week newspapers reported on Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s first trip overseas to Liberia, the West African country where more than 4,800 people recently died from the spread of the Ebola virus. A new Ebola outbreak seems to be emerging at this time but Secretary Price did not address that. Rather, he made a point of praising survivors of the earlier outbreak, declaring that: “We celebrate their victory over Ebola.” Now, from my perspective as a medical sociologist, it’s hard to see that those who survived Ebola are deserving of any particular praise. Is Price’s (unspoken) implication that these survivors somehow worked harder than those who died? That they were smarter or made better choices? That they were more morally deserving to live? And in praising the survivors was Price implicitly criticizing those who did not survive?

“Waging war” is not the solution this country needs

At the time of the first outbreak, I critiqued the U.S. rhetoric of “waging war” on Ebola. I voiced concern that we have come to rely on our military as the only governmental agency capable of responding to any sort of crisis. And I pointed out that our America inclination to frame social problems in terms of war underpins our troubled history of crusades to stamp out vices and diseases (the two words often are used interchangeably) ranging from alcoholism to obesity to cancer. Declaring war on disease sends the message that the sufferer is somehow at fault and wars on disease too easily turn into wars on those who embody the disease. Our racially driven “war on drugs,” more aptly described as a “war on drug users,” and has led to local police departments being armed with military equipment (including tanks) and to the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

Bleak Binary Terms 

In the era of Trump and Price the rhetoric of “victory” takes on whole new levels of significance. From the start, the Trump campaign framed the world, and the people of the world, in bleak binary terms of “winners” and “losers.” Famous Trump remarks include “Believe me. You’ll never get bored with winning. You’ll never get bored!” and “Work hard, be smart and always remember, winning takes care of everything!” Candidate Trump’s comment that best sums up the winners vs. losers world view concerned Senator John McCain: “I supported him, he lost, he let us down. But you know, he lost, so I’ve never liked him as much after that, because I don’t like losers…He’s not a war hero…He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

The Price of Winning and Losing

In the world of health and health care, this paradigm is dangerous. It comes close to the rhetoric of the eugenics movement (developed in the United States and most famously and energetically adopted by the Nazis) – the idea that some people are inherently better than others (the winners) and that those people deserve social praise, resources, and encouragement to reproduce themselves. Losers, in contrast, should be marginalized and discouraged from reproducing.

Today, the Trump Administration unveiled its first budget – a budget that rewards strength and punishes weakness. According to the New York Times, “The document, grandly titled ‘A New Foundation for American Greatness,’ encapsulates much of the ‘America first’ message that powered Mr. Trump’s campaign. It calls for an increase in military spending of 10 percent … [It also] calls for slashing more than $800 billion from Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor, while slicing $192 billion from nutritional assistance and $272 billion over all from welfare programs [over the next decade].”

Winners and losers, indeed.

 

See  the following for more on winner/loser paradigm, the health care system, and the rhetoric of war on the Ebola outbreak:

Pink Ribbon Extravaganza

Health Insurance Roulette: The House Always Wins

Why Can’t the US Help Solve Ebola Outbreak without “Waging War” and “Sending Troops.”