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Is
Our High-Tech Health Care System Better Than War-Ravaged
Sudan's?
By David Morse
Four men were carrying someone down the road in a
bed. I had encountered some strange things in southern
Sudan—seen malnourished children; nearly stepped on a
large snake the color of pinkly opalescent milk—but
nothing more compelling than this.
What impressed me as I struggled to catch up, was the
speed at which they were moving, each man carrying a leg
of the bed, which was constructed of rough-cut wood and
a lattice of rope. I could see its occupant was a woman.
The little procession walked with fierce determination,
despite the sweltering heat and the mud.
Akon is a market town and a county seat in South
Sudan, and this was the main road, but the rains had
turned the red clay into a sea of braided puddles.
Finally they stopped and I was able to meet with
them. I learned that the woman lived in an outlying
village. Her husband and brother-in-law and other
members of her extended family had carried her like that
for two hours to get to a clinic here in Akon that
consisted of a big shade tree and a meager stash of
medicines -- on the chance that someone could save her.
She was gaunt and feverish, suffering from abdominal
pains. She told her story in Dinka and someone
translated. She'd gone into labor, and after two days of
contractions, the traditional midwife had determined
that the birth canal was too narrow, and had cut the
baby up and withdrawn the pieces.
I wondered if something was left in her uterus or maybe
she'd been cut. They looked to me hopefully. Lacking any
medical training, I felt helpless. But I sent for my
Dinka colleague, Chris Koor Garang, a "Lost Boy" who had
become a U.S. citizen and a certified nurse. He'd
brought medicines with him. Chris gave the woman an oral
antibiotic and instructions for taking the remaining
doses.
This was her seventh pregnancy; all had ended badly.
The pills, condoms, and other birth control options that
we take for granted in the industrial world were not
available to her. Nor were the anti-diarrheal
medications and routine vaccinations that save infant
lives. South Sudan, torn by decades of colonialism and
decades of war, has an estimated sixty percent infant
mortality rate, about the highest in the world. Maternal
mortality is also high: one in ten women dies giving
birth.
Miraculously, this woman lived.
Now fast-forward two years, to last March. I was
visiting my son in Vermont -- which was fortunate,
because when I experienced stomach pain and nausea, I
could get to a local ER, and then be taken by ambulance
to one of New England's top-notch hospitals. There I
underwent emergency removal of eighteen inches of small
intestine that had become twisted and gangrenous.
I was lucky. Had I been traveling in South Sudan, we
might have assumed I had some parasite. I never would
have made it to an airport for transport to Nairobi in
time for surgery. I wouldn't be alive to write these
words.
As I lay in the Intensive Care Unit, emerging from a
five-day medically induced coma, attached to various
life-support systems—attended by a bevy of surgeons,
anesthesiologists, pulmonologists, radiologists, and
nurses—I experienced a string of hallucinations. When
my mind was finally clear, one image kept surfacing.
It was that woman being carried down the road in the
bed.
We were fortunate, each in our own way. She had become
for me an emblem of survival.
Our beds could not have been more different. Mine
contained computer-driven air-pouches that pulsed in a
manner designed to preserve muscle tone and prevent
bedsores. It weighed probably 800 pounds.
Was I grateful for the technology that saved my own
life?
Of course.
But my point in recounting theses two stories is not to
contrast a failed or non-existent healthcare delivery
system with a successful one. On the contrary, that
woman and I both represent failed systems. They've
simply failed in different ways -- the one from poverty,
the other from profits.
My own treatment was commodified, under the dictates of
U.S. hyper-capitalism, to an extent that comparable
treatment under socialized medicine is not. The total
price for my surgery and related expenses came to
$144,000, or eight thousand dollars per inch of
intestine removed.
Fortunately my expenses were covered -- under Medicare,
supplemented by the excellent private healthcare
insurance my wife gets as a retired University of
Connecticut professor. Our private plan is almost as
good as that enjoyed by members of Congress. I was out
hardly a dime.
My son in Vermont has no such coverage. He works as a
chef in a small restaurant and is one of the estimated
47 million uninsured Americans. Like most, he’s in debt.
Too young for Medicare, and struggling to make ends
meet, he lost his private healthcare coverage last June
by failing to make a monthly payment on time.
Others among our fellow citizens are denied coverage by
private insurers because they are sick. Cancer,
diabetes, or heart conditions make them "poor risks" for
profit-driven companies. Still others have coverage
tied to their employment, marital status, parents, or
tuition payments. And finally, others are too poor to do
more than put food on the table.
In other words, it's a completely insane system that
makes sense only to those who reap profits from it.
Is this any less bizarre than that woman being carried
down the road to a clinic that barely exists?
In short, it seems that we in the U.S. have shaped our
technology, or allowed it to shape us, into a system
which at its very essence is less humane than one
ravaged by colonialism and war.
This is why a "public option" must be central to any
healthcare reform. It offers an alternative for the
uninsured, while serving as a yardstick to measure the
performance of a private healthcare industry notorious
for its greed and runaway costs.
This public option is precisely what Republicans and
conservative Democrats want to strip from the reform
package. Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley argues
that a government-run plan "will ultimately force
private insurers out of business," and that its
supporters are "trying to open a back door toward a
fully government-run, or single-payer, health system
like those in Canada or England." Even as polls indicate
that most Americans favor a public option, the Senate
shows itself a rich man’s club whose members are all too
indebted to the healthcare industry.
Two statistics are often quoted by President Obama in
arguing the case for healthcare reform. One is that
Americans pay one and a half times as much as citizens
of other industrial nations, and have a lower life
expectancy. The other: our spending on healthcare
accounts for one sixth of our national economy.
However, neither statistic adequately reflects what we
do not spend individually because we can't afford it—the inequity that translates into life or death for
millions of Americans who, like my son, might not feel
they had the luxury of going to the hospital.
In my own mind, the image of that woman being carried
down the road in such a determined fashion, despite the
mud and heat, has taken on special meaning in the
context of the present debate. It was the urgency that
surrounded her. We could learn from that. We who may
carelessly assume that our own system is somehow more
"civilized," simply because our resources are more
abundant and our technology more sophisticated, need to
rediscover our collective caring—to understand access
to healthcare as a basic human right.
David Morse is an independent journalist and
political analyst. He can be reached at
dmorse@david-morse.com
Source:
alternet
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 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 15 October 2009
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