President Bush, Meet Lorraine
Ehrenreich, Barbara
President Bush, Meet Lorraine Flip Side Barbara Ehrenreich Here's the news that rockedmylittle world this month:Wegot a message thata family friend, let's call her Lorraine, who was in an ICU,...
...If we have to take "personal responsibility" for our doctor visits and routine care we'll be thrifty about it-or so the thinking goes- and the nation's medical expenditures will stop spiking like an Ebola fever...
...The cost of a mammogram-well over $100- must have been out of reach...
...No one aside from the rare victim of Munchausen's syndrome goes looking for recreational medical care...
...She might be out volunteering for the needy right now, instead of lying in terror in a hospital bed...
...Her problem wasn't that she feasted on unnecessary care, but that like so many of the forty-five million uninsured Americans, she wasn't getting any care at all...
...Ifyou know anythingatall about breast cancer "staging," you know thereisnofifth stage...
...President Bush, in his State of the Union address, said we should each have a "catastrophic" health insurance policy for the big ticket items like breast cancer, plus a tax-deductible savings account for the little things, like mammograms...
...We can eat right, too (whatever that may mean, with the dietary advice fluctuating from month to month...
...If she'd been diagnosed earlier, she might have gotten by with a mastectomy and a bout of chemotherapy instead of burning up Medicaid dollars in an ICU...
...But we have precious little control over our demand for health care...
...Lorraine has no health insurance...
...It's an old idea, going back at least to the Clintons, that the problem with the American health system is that we, the consumers, just consume too much...
...Let's be hard-headed about Lorraine's case...
...The diagnosis came back inacoupleofdays: fourth-stage breast cancer, which has spreadtoanumberofother organs, including her lungs...
...In the last few weeks, there'd been some mumblings about "not feelingahundred percent," but no hint of anything seriously wrong...
...Sure, we can exercise and refrain from smoking and sky-diving and swimming with sharks...
...But it's no more in our control than the wind and floods we insure our homes against...
...And how much does the "personal responsibility" theory even apply to the insured population...
...Barbara Ehrenreich is a columnist for The Progressive...
...But it's the medical profession that determines how often we need our blood drawn, our breasts squished, our cervices scraped, or any of the other nasty interventions they have to offer...
...The fact is there's a big difference between the economics of health care and that of, say, costume jewelry...
...If the medical care we consume was under our own control, I'd say, sure, save up for it and use it wisely...
...You think it's too expensive to have universal health insurance...
...Make us mindful of the costs by raising co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs, and we'll stop indulging in blood workups, MRIs, prostate exams, and all those other fun things...
...we can splurge on it or leave it alone...
...I have insurance-at enormous cost, because I'm not part of a group plan and I'm an ex-breast cancer patient myself-but that doesn't mean I choose what care I get...
...We didn't know that...
...But it turns out she's been struggling with the cell phone bill and the rent...
...Her latest book is "Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream...
...Maybe, when she first noticed the lump, she should have staged a sit-in at the nearest clinic until it sprang for a free mammogram...
...Her website is www.barbaraehrenreich.com...
...In fact, we'd been content to believe that her consulting business was going as well as she said it was...
...President Bush, Meet Lorraine Flip Side Barbara Ehrenreich Here's the news that rockedmylittle world this month:Wegot a message thata family friend, let's call her Lorraine, who was in an ICU, barely abletobreathe onher own...
...President Bush, meet Lorraine...
...It's not my idea to have an annual mammogram and pap smear...
...We the consumers control the demand for costume jewelry...
...In her late forties now, she's a former accountant who never could find another decent job-also a news junkie, an avid reader, and an energetic volunteer in a number of worthy causes...
...A few weeks ago, unbeknownst to us, she'd moved out of her apartment and into a free room offered by one of the nonprofits she volunteers for...
...But her idea of "personal responsibility" was not to be a bother to anyone...
...The doctor had to threaten tears before I'd submit to a bone scan, and they'll have to drag me in for a colonoscopy...
Vol. 70 • April 2006 • No. 4
