The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) sent us a flyer the other day urging support for Dr. Dean's campaign for the Presidency because, as a medical doctor, he knows the country needs an affordable national program of health care. And yesterday Oprah's show was concerned with the risks to the health of very young teens. But, while I fervently support the effort to sweep the Shrub from the White House with a Brush (Howard BRUSH Dean, that is), those two events set me to thinking along somewhat contrarian lines.
I don't want national health care and I certainly don't want to pay for it. Affordable or not (?affordable? is a word that cries to be dissected all on its own) ?health care? is one of those bureaucratic terms which hides more than it discloses--a term intended to make people think they want something that they don't.
Children need care. Old people need care. The ill and injured need medical attention. Healthy people do NOT need care.
On the other hand, and the word ?hand? is very appropriate here, while I do not want to pay for other people's health care, a program of ?re-education? is certainly called for. It's amazing how quickly what one generation has learned can be forgotten when we don't pay attention. I'm referring here specifically the condition of people's hands--where they've been to, what they've touched, and when they were last washed.
Since the mouth is a very sensitive organ, it's only natural that young humans use it to assess their environment. But that's exactly why it used to be common practice, at least for people who cared about the well-being of their children, to teach children to keep their dirty fingers, as well as other body parts (their own and others'), out of their mouths; unless they knew for certain that these appendages had been well scrubbed, and recently, with soap and water to wash away those ?germs? and ?nasties,? the general designations of all the tiny and sometimes invisible critters whose sole object in their existence is to make humans very ill or die. While we have learned to categorize the worms, viruses and bacilli, who knows how many others a good scrubbing will keep at bay.
So, while I don't want to pay extra for education that should be a basic component of child care, I will do so anyway. Just as I'll pay for universal medical care because an ill or injured person affects and may even ?infect? all the people around him. That's also why I'll support a universal program of medically necessary care and attention, even for people whose personal behavior (speeding cars, smoking tobacco, abusing alcohol and drugs) causes them injury and disease. Things that are broken should, if it's possible, be fixed up and that includes people. Though I won't want to, I'll pay for that.
What I won't pay for is maintaining bodies hooked up to machines just so they can be shown off, like those mummified saints displayed behind glass in some European churches. If all the systems are broken and can't be made to work on their own, it's not good for the patient being "maintained" and it's not good for the people who man the machines, when their skills could be better applied to what can be fixed.
So, if it looks like we're going to have a President who actually knows something about illness and disease, we're going to need a frank discussion about what people actually need. They don't need ?healthcare? and they don't need more people pushing paper (or buttons on computers). They do need childcare and eldercare and medical care for the ill and injured. They also need educating in prevention and in knowing what goes into and comes out of one's mouth, and what shouldn't!
If the focus is on medically necessary care and education in prevention, a rich nation like ours can surely afford it.