How will we remember this?
I didn't even really get what the Twitter trending topic of dc912 was until the end of today. I suppose part of me realized what it was, but part of me was just unwilling to believe that thousands of people would descend on the capitol of the US to decry the establishment of a government health care system for the country. Why we, the richest and most powerful country in the world don't already have one has been mind blowing to me for years.
You see, I grew up without health care. My family had "too much" income to qualify for the free health care and not enough income or the blessed qualifications to get our own policy. My father worked as a glass blower in a studio that thought itself above offering health care to the employees. My mother worked as a part time teacher at a community college who, while offering a fantastic package for their full time workers, gave nothing to the part time staff, saving no end of money. I grew up ahead of my time, not being scuttled to the doctor every time I sneezed and having to "walk off" twisted ankles and the like. I suppose growing up this way is one of the reasons I can pop a blister or for that matter, trim my own nails.
As the years passed, my brother and I were lucky. A couple of cuts that needed stitches here and there, but no serious problems. My parents paid for everything out of their own pocket. Some 25 years ago it was still costly, but somewhat possible to pay your way. I doubt the scar that was 16 stitches on my arm would cost less than $2,500 to be dealt with today which is two months of rent for me in San Francisco and nearly half a year for others in the state.
Sadly, it was my father who finally got burnt by the lack of insurance. For years he had suffered digestion problems that the doctors we could afford to go to would label as Irritable bowel syndrome. As it turns out he had Carcinoid syndrome which is a particularly nasty thing as is slowly grows benign tumors mostly around your digestive system. The tumors don't kill you though as in the more common cancers. What kills you is slowly having your crucial organs being unable to function with most often the liver first to go.
Over about five years, I watched my father slowly waste away. You know how gaunt Steve Jobs looks these days? Well, picture a man about 185cm (6'1") and 100kg (220 lbs) who was incredibly strong losing all his muscle and dropping to about 2/3 his original body weight because every time he ate he was unable to digest the food and was literally starving to death. I'd visit every couple of months and each first impression of him scared the hell out of me as he declined in health, but I couldn't let him see it because he pressed on, never complaining about his body as it crumbled upon him. A stronger person, I've never known.
It does turn out that there is a cure to carcinoid. It's a once a month injection that costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $4000. That was nearly twice as much as my father made in a month and while he tried desperately to qualify for Medical (our medical system in California for the poor) the condition worsened until one day, while seated and gently carving a new piece of art, he had a fatal heart attack that ended his five year battle with a disease. My father, a happy and satisfied man; an American living a rural Californian community free of toxins, eating a healthy diet, not smoking, only drinking socially, and exercising regularly, died from a completely curable disease at the age of 60 in the United States of America simply because he wasn't able to afford the treatment or even be granted the ability to know earlier in life that he had this curable condition.
This happened six years ago and I bring it up not to tug on heartstrings, but to prove a point that America is letting itself die. It is unconstitutional not to have a national health care system in place. It is wasteful monetarily not to have this system and eventually replace all the redundant systems we currently have for the old, poor, military, and government workers. It is also wasteful as we pay for all those who seek primary care in our emergency rooms or overworked clinics.
To all those who marched in Washington DC, I can't be angry or even frustrated with them. Anyone who puts a Hitler mustache on a picture Obama is so easily led astray that you can't be mad at someone like that. The same goes for all those in this Tea Party group who oppose a national health care system. They're unable to truly understand how this system will not only save the country money, but will also personally save them or someone they care about some day as more and more of us are without any form of insurance.
Don't get me wrong, I think we should most definitely pay for a government system. It should not and cannot be a free system. People misunderstand this about the systems in Europe; they aren't free. People pay for them through deductions from their paychecks. And if you have no paycheck and are poor, then you don't pay, but obviously you still get access to health care because it is a fundamental human right that was written in to the constitution of this country over 200 years before this became an issue. That's how important it is.
I have suffered my own personal losses, worked to get past them, and voted in those who are working to make a system such as this possible. I have done what I can as a citizen and now can only wait to see how the pieces may fall. My only concern in all this is for our collective memory of this period in history. How will we remember this? I can only ask in that once the votes are counted and if it fails, we have a monument be erected to all the politicians and how they voted. Something permanent beyond a file in a public record stored away and out of sight.
We need to remember all the No's of the 111th Congress and all the Joe Wilsons out there. Their stupidity must be remembered and their names become part of our common vernacular for "fool" or "crook" as they are cursed by the 99% of us at the "bottom" who will lie dying in the street, smirking one last smirk, and remembering how great America once was, just before we lost that chance to stop an inevitable decline if we are left helpless to heal the citizens our nation.
Write to and call your national senators and representatives. Tell them they will not serve another term if they vote No and stop national health care.
12 09 2009 0 comments
Tags: health, obama, us america
I just don't have time
As I am coming out under the dark, viral clouds of a cold that has knocked me out of commission for the last week, I can easily narrow down on who Patient Zero was that brought this upon me. It was a guy at my gym who was obviously sick that decided to move next to me and cough like an idiot while I was in the middle of my workout. As a friend pointed out, "See, that's what you get for going to the gym." Sure, it could have possibly not been him, but at the same time, I work from home, haven't flown in a couple of months, and haven't really been around anyone sick recently except him.
It all makes me think upon the larger issue in US America in that we are continually building a structure in to our lives where we simply don't have time for anything except what is immediately important to the individual. Growing up in very rural California, when you got sick as a kid, you stayed home until you were well. The same went for adults. You only went to work if you were completely flat-out broke and even then you thought about it long and hard because you knew that you were sick and getting well meant resting.
Low and behold the shock when I moved to the SF Bay Area and found that people came to work no matter how sick they were. They are so focused here and feel that they are so crucial to whatever is going on at their job, there is simply no way they can take time off. Folks need to wake up and realize that if someone can't be offline for a solid week, then there is something seriously wrong with how that person is working and how the company overall is functioning. The "always on" mentality can't apply to we organic beings. We need to recharge.
But tied in with this is the complete frustration people feel in the US when something unscheduled hoses their schedule. A cold is a perfect example of this. In addition to the working sick, I was aghast when I found out that people went to the gym sick in order to "burn off" the illness. There are people who swear by this, but obviously it doesn't work. If it does, show me a controlled study that proves it. What it does do is give the individual the feeling that they are working as fast as they can to get back in to the swing of things, fighting their cold at the gym. Oh yeah, it also exposes everyone else in the gym to their viral-laden air and fluids all over the machines. Screw everyone else though. They're getting better faster; they think.
This attitude doesn't just apply to colds. It applies to other things as well, such as women scheduling a C-Section so that they know exactly when they're going to give birth and can work around the inconvenience of the whole thing. I wonder why women (and their spouses who go along with this) bother to have children at all, since kids are one unscheduled thing after another if raised in a healthy environment... But the quintessential summary of this attitude was a campaign by Monistat years ago that actually ran on TV with the catchphrase, "I don't have time for a yeast infection". While my family (remember, we're country folk) found it hilarious, at the same time, it's sad that in the American culture, health is such a secondary concern in life, where for other countries, it, food, and family all battle for top components to a life well-lived. I guess there are studies that show things are taking too long in the US.
With me, I'm still slogging through this and yes, I've been pretty inactive, just allowing myself to recover, which is why I haven't really written anything in a week. I've been far too busy being in bed and reading King Leopold's Ghost which is an excellent account of Belgian Colonial screwing they gave to the Congo. I highly recommend it as well as punching coughing morons next to you at the gym and then washing your hands thoroughly after said punching.
13 04 2009 1 comment
Tags: health, us america
A Touch of the Spanish Health Care
Being that this latest trip has been in the middle of winter, there have been the normal, seasonal illnesses, which suck, but are expected. Just to make parental units happy, that meant going to Spanish doctors. Well, not me, but my proxy with the exact same symptoms as me. I just sat in the waiting room, observing Spanish health care at work.
Probably one of the biggest differences between the care in Spain and the care in the US is that you can actually get care in Spain as a foreigner and not the horrors that some idiots report, but good care. Visiting a relative in the bottom of the barrel, most basic, Social Security type hospital for those with no money showed a hospital that was vastly more modern than most I've seen in the US. It's quite amazing what happens when you nationalize health care. Suddenly it becomes something for the public and officials are held to task if the hospitals are no good, since everyone needs them. As opposed to the US, where everything is concerned with the bottom line and so upgraded equipment is a rather low priority as it isn't always profitable; not that the health of a nation should ever, ever be a lucrative venture as it for HMO's and Big Pharma.
But, sitting in a smaller doctor's office, the immediate thing I noticed was the atmosphere. Yes, everyone shouldn't have been there, since they just had colds and were all coughing and wheezing, but despite this, the mood of the office was rather light-hearted. People actually felt good about being there. For starters, they knew that there was no way this was going to put them in to debt for the rest of their lives. In fact, if they have supplemental insurance, it costs them absolutely nothing for a visit. Compare that to any doctor's office you've ever been in the US. Everything always runs late, even if you're the first patient. People hate being there. People are cranky. People are complaining about how much the visit will cost. And lastly, people are only there because they really aren't getting better. They held off going for as long as they could because they didn't want to spend the money, they hate the arrogant doctors, and they hate how much any drugs will cost. In other words, that rather elusive term of "preventative care" actually exists in Spain. Oh yeah, the drugs are dirt cheap compared to the US and again, if you have supplemental insurance, somethings are mere pennies.
Sure, there are some bad sides as well. Stuff doesn't really run on time, but I would say that they're no worse at timeliness than the US. Another bad thing is that in the hospital, the cable tv is only if you pay, as you can see below. So, you see a lot of folks reading a great deal in the hospitals, which doesn't bother me at all.
But, balancing out these small pains are the fact that after sitting in the office, the doctor prescribed my proxy who had the same symptoms as me with a double dose of the cold meds since it was obvious we both had the same thing and it was common sense. I mean, holy hell, common sense in a doctor, who would have thought?
14 01 2009 0 comments
Tags: health, spain, us america
My God... It's Full of Dentists
The one thing that immediately stuck out in Sopron was the vast jungle of dentist offices everywhere. I mean, even the apartment we were staying in was on top of a dental office. It was a bit weird, but not as weird as being on top of the plastic surgery clinic in Brno.
So what gives? Well, Sopron sits on a peninsula of Hungarian territory that juts in to Austria so much like San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by water, Sopron is surrounded on three sides by Austria. This made things no fun for them in WWII. The other big thing is that Hungary is still on the Forint and Austria is on the Euro. Because of this, the exchange rate is very much in favor of the Austrians and thusly, they all cross the border to get dental work done. Apparently it's somewhere around half price.
This is not really anything new. The British have been doing this in Zagreb, Croatia for some time now where even the cost of flight and hotel makes taking the trip to the Balkans a good value.
The end result are all the dental offices we saw, as well as other therapeutic services. Once we figured it out though, we did realize that the vast majority of "tourists" we saw in town were actually cheap Austrians on day trips. As for real tourists like us, there were quite few, which is one of the reasons I enjoyed Sopron a great deal.
07 07 2008 1 comment
Tags: health, hungary, sopron, the europe
A Visit to Panzi Hospital
Panzi Hospital is probably the most well-known hospital in all of DR Congo. It's gained a great deal of attention due to the fact that they have a section which is devoted to treating cases of sexual violence.
Attention was really thrust upon the hospital by a special report on CNN in 2006, then Eve Ensler of "The Vagina Monologues" fame, and then Oprah. What has thusly ensued and is fueled by seemingly good intentions has been a media blitz the likes of which is preposterous. The issue of sexual violence is currently one of the "sexy" issues in the eastern regions of Congo. It's sexiness is due to its brutality and the fact that it makes for news story that leave western mouths agape.
To back up a bit, the regions of eastern DR Congo have been in the midst of a multi-national war that has scarred the Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu regions for the past decade starting in 1998 and officially ending in 2003, although a great number of skirmishes still flare up and there are large numbers of rebels still in the jungles. Rather than attempting to sum up (and probably quote incorrectly), those who are interested should read more about what has been termed, the African World War.
Most of the results of the war were typical and quickly glossed over by western media once western interest waned. Land mines? Sure, they exist, but that's so WWII. Death? Sure, about 5.4 million people they estimate, but hey, that's just war. Displacement? Of course, but that can happen anywhere and without war as was seen in New Orleans, so that's super boring. Rape? Well, now we're starting to get somewhere, since rape isn't something we like to think happens in the western world and can be easily juxtaposed on Africa as a problem inherent to the "Dark Continent". Sexual violence? Ah yes, pay dirt. The more brutally and horrendous the violence done to women and girls, the better. That is sordid news and it makes for the kind of print runs that leave the rest of the world shaking their heads in disbelief. A disbelief I might add, that is prejudicial. Yes, these events occurred. No one would ever want to belittle what has happened to the people in this area, but to posit the reporting in such a way as to paint the Africans in the countries involved as being anymore brutal than any other humans in the history of warfare is just pathetic, lazy journalism. For a brilliant take on this point and the excessive abuse of hyperbole, Michela Wrong (whose writing is simply some of the finest there is) wrote an article about her frustrations in how journalists are dealing with the situation in eastern Congo.
While all these media coverage has generated a good deal of funding directed to the hospital, much of the money doesn't get there, as it is tied up in bureaucracy like the UNFPA which seems to only exist to fund staff and offices who then disseminate money to organizations that actually are hands-on. But as far as hospitals go in Congo, this is one of the better ones with people receiving treatment and getting help. Obviously there is more demand that there is space, but this will hopefully improve with time. Something that would help to improve it is journalists covering other hospitals in the regions, which while not the media darlings that Panzi is, are doing much the same work, yet without the recognition. And this is a big problem. Western people don't understand what's happening in Congo and so they figure that just throwing money at the issue will make it better. While it may make them feel good about themselves and less guilty about the good lives we lead in the US and Europe it isn't fixing the problems.
We need journalist that actually go out and do their jobs instead of just nuzzling the easy headlines. I mean, there was a German journalist from Focus magazine there the day we were. When asked if they had an angle or if was just a reportage, the photographer told me it was just a reportage and he actually felt good about this. Panzi is flooded with people reporting on a story that has been done to death, so why does it keep happening? We talked with Dr. Denis Mukwege and the man is tired of journalists coming day in, day out for reports that interrupt his work and then don't translate in to action. It's what I like to call the "Israel Syndrome" wherein journalists get their hooks in to a place that's easy to cover and gets a lot of attention from their viewers/readers. Thusly they keep going back there time and again whenever a "tough" piece is needed.
As citizens in our respective countries, we need to have awareness to start with and then effective action to follow. Sensationalist blather like Lisa Jackson's The Greatest Silence get all kinds of media attention, while films that actually tell the stories of the victims, such as Lumo (which wasn't shot at Panzi) get overlooked. And while I would suggest that direct aid is the best place to put your money, I wouldn't suggest that Westerners should head to Bukavu or Goma and attempt to save the helpless, no matter how grand their delusions. People need to be aware of where their money is going. Just blindly donating to the Red Cross or agencies such as UNFPA does little good as you don't really know where your money is going. For god's sake, read up and learn about the agencies that operate in places like Congo. The information is out there. Make use off all the benefits of the web and be an educated donor, not one of Oprah's blind followers. That is of more help to Panzi and the other hospitals at the moment than anything else, because the source of the suffering and sexual violence comes from the foreign policies of our governments and if we really and truly want to end it, we need to pressure the people in charge not just slap a bandage on bad politics.
10 05 2008 0 comments
Tags: bukavu, dr congo, health, in to africa, israel syndrome
And then there was Illness
I spent about one day in the east of Congo, in Bukavu in perfect health. After the flight from the west, I was just mainly tired, but excited to see this other side of the country with its beautiful Lake Kivu, mountains and much fresher air. Bukavu is at 1,500 meters (about 5,000 feet in metric-so-scary-land) which makes for a number of changes. For one, the climate is much cooler, which means a lot fewer mosquitoes. The constant sweating and thick air that is so hard to breath in Kinshasa just isn't there. While the air isn't incredibly pure due to all the trash being burned all the time, it is much more enjoyable. The other thing is that life is much slower in Bukavu. The throngs of people wandering around all the time are severely lessened. There are still a lot of folks though, since Bukavu sits right on the border with Rwanda and there is a lot of commerce traffic because of this.
It was our first day after a good night's sleep that we headed out to watch a march by the journalists of the town in support of World Press Freedom Day, a holiday that doesn't get a lot of attention in the US or Europe, but is quite important in DR Congo where journalists are killed simply for digging just a touch too deep on an issue.
It was quite a warm day for the march and we were photographing it without bringing along any water. At first this wasn't a big deal, but then we were out under the sun in the peak of the day, waiting for two hours to see the governor of the South Kivu province come out and address this march that was waiting in front of his office. Of course, as is typical with Congolese politicians, he never showed, leaving us dismayed and also dehydrated.
After lunch, I started to feel a lot less than fantastic. My head started throbbing like nothing I've ever felt before and I was having trouble seeing straight. We headed back to a friend's house and the symptoms only got worse. I decided to call it an early day and go to sleep while drinking a great deal of ORS to try and correct what was appearing to be a severe case of dehydration.
Overnight, nothing really got better and I woke up the next day feeling just as dizzy and completely out of it, barely able to walk a few steps without wanting to collapse. We called up some friends who came over and had me take some malaria medication just to be sure I wasn't coming down with that. Then it was back to bed to sleep some more, only to wake up in the afternoon and throw up all the food I had tried to eat previously, but at the same time keep drinking water. It was also at this point that some lovely intestinal disorder started up that had me running to the toilet about every hour. The next day was much the same, although I started to feel a bit better by the end of it after more vomiting.
On the third day of this, I really did start feeling better. Chatting with a friend of ours we realized that I had either gotten sunstroke and some of the lovely intestinal amoebas that are around, or it was just the amoebas. I don't really know what the case was, but I got well enough to fly back to Kinshasa and then pick up some medicine for the possible amoebas which seemed to cure that as well and was quite a steal at $10 compared to what digestive antibiotics would cost back in the US. Naturally, while in Kinshasa I got some kind of weird rash on my arm that is just starting to go away as well.
On the crappy side of all this, I missed out on getting to see the gorillas in Kahuzi-Biega Park, which was a real bummer, since it's one of the few "affordable" ($300) places to see gorillas in the wild. On the plus side, I lost about eight kilograms (15 pounds in metric-so-scary-land) but of course gained a good deal of it back once able to hold on to solid food.
It's amazing all the crap that's waiting for people in the jungles of Africa and it explains why I spent the ridiculous amount of $500 on vaccinations before going. It's just ironic that I got taken down by something so basic as the sun and it's taught me an important lesson to always drink plenty of water. You fuck with the sun and you will indeed get burnt, like the top of my head was.
09 05 2008 0 comments
Tags: bukavu, dr congo, health, in to africa
Rebuking CNN's Medical Care Abroad Article
I came across this CNN article the other day from the end of February. It's about the dire situation you put yourself in as an American when you travel abroad and that you must, absolutely must have travel insurance. Take a minute and read it. You'll be thrilled you did as I found the article to be ludicrous, poorly written, and most importantly completely without research.
Let's take a look at this. Who is the author? It's a woman by the name of Debra Alban. She is on the regular staff of CNN and appears to be more of a producer than a writer, although she has contributed some other pieces with sweeping generalizations such as this and this. Her approach seems to be to posit some bit of "fact" and then base the rest of her article around this with little detail given the intricacies of what she is writing. This seems to be more the style of FOX News and I suppose this is all subjective to tastes, but for comparison, look at any BBC News article and you'll see that they support what they're saying with a bevy of facts to back it up. Even what are basically op-ed pieces like Mark Mardell's Euroblog are supported by on the ground experience that is pertinent, relevant, and specific. You get the feeling from Debra's article that, while it is most likely not the case, she hasn't actually been outside the US in a long, long time.
The start of her article cites a 19 year-old girl in Spain who purportedly received less than adequate health care after an accident in Spain where she shattered her kneecap at a football match. This is Alran's prime example as to the dangers of receiving health care outside the US. Let's talk about this girl whose name is Orla Buckley. She has a Bebo page where she goes by the name of Bootiejuice, which is simply prosaic to a point of transcendence. Bootiejuice lives in Ireland now and has a great many pictures up in her profile that focus around the primary activity of drinking. There is nothing wrong with this, except that for a reporter to base an article about health care outside the US on her activities, is inane. One can only assume that this girl was most probably drunk when the incident occurred (seeing as how she appears to be drunk a lot and was at a football match where drinking is the #1 fan pastime) and that her recollection of events is greatly skewed. Then of course there is the issue of Bootiejuice stating she has "intermediate" knowledge of Spanish. Americans have a wickedly bad tendency to overstate their ability with languages. By American definitions, I'm damned near the "conversational" level in about six languages: Spanish, French, Russian, Croatia, Bosnian, and Serbian. Given this and the fact that asking what was needed to be asked by Bootiejuice in Spanish is quite basic, I can only deduce that her level of the language was indeed poor despite what she says, or that she could speak the language well, but was indeed so drunk that she was unable to speak or understand anything. Thusly, faulting the hospital for not being able to explain the problem to her is blame severely misplaced.
Oh yes, there's one other big point that needs to be raised in using Bootiejuice as a source; her incident happened in 2003. This article has just recently been published in 2008. That is about half a decade which has passed since this happened. No matter the degree of verisimilitude to the event, how can this source be used? Simple. Alban couldn't find any more relevant source from a later date, because these incidents so exceedingly rare that she had to resort to cherry picking.
In all honesty, I would gladly have any kind of heath care done in Spain as opposed to the US, seeing as it it is 7th in WHO ratings and the US is 37th. Bootiejuice was actually lucky to have the accident happen in Spain, since they will treat anyone there regardless of coverage and it's easy for the American doctors to criticize about the surgery she had now, because it's always easier to criticize when you're not there. Travel insurance would have done little to help her though, unless of course she had the "evacuation" policy. I don't think people realize that travel insurance policies are a lot like extended warranties. There are rare occasions where if one is trekking through the heart of Africa they can be useful, but in day to day issues, they are about as bad as the main health care policies found in the US. For instance, a friend of the family had a mental breakdown on a recent trip to China and while she had travel insurance (and supposedly a good one) none of the cost of getting her out and back to the US was covered. Why? Because it was a mental issue and the small print didn't cover that.
In conclusion, I felt I had to bring this up as this article has been reproduced on many sites out there, since this is CNN and supposedly a reputable new agency. But, I question Debra Arlan's journalistic integrity. This article appears to be little more than a thinly veiled guise to advertise travel health insurance just in time for when people start thinking about the travel season again. The article is so bad and her arguments so weak that I wonder as to whether she was paid by an insurers group to write it? Obviously, I have to proof of this, but then again, Arlan's article puts forward next to no proof to back up her claims as well, so touché.
07 03 2008 0 comments
Tags: health, the europe, travel, us america
My Chi Is Pissed
I've made another attempt at the yoga on Sunday. I haven't really had good luck with the yoga in the past, but that was Bikram Yoga at Funky Door Yoga in San Francisco. I've blabbed about the problems here, here, here, and here. Needless to say, I find Bikram and definitely Funky Door to be flawed. My new yoga instructor isn't in to it and I've also talked with a co-worker about the problems that we've both experienced in our backs after having done the whole Bikram thing. I don't think things have ever really sorted out for me with it a year later and thus, I've turned to Hatha yoga as a means to an end of constant, craptastic pain.
It's not to say that you can't overdo Hatha yoga as well. There are many levels to it and if like me, you think you're all macho and can hit the top level on the first try, you're going to be in for a world of hurt. You need to get over the fact that there will be 70 year old women who kick your ass in the yoga department. This is good. Respect them and learn from them. If you still don't get over it, then, if you must, do some passive-agressive things like take their "spot" in the room or ask to see pictures of their grandchildren and then walk away laughing before they get them out. Just, whatever you do, don't do the damned head stands to try and impress or keep up.
I made the later mistake on Sunday. I tried for the head stand, was amazed that I was actually upside down for the first time in my life and have since been paying for it ever since with a lot of pain and general weirdness. After talking with my mom (who also does Hatha) she was saying that I stirred up my Chi, that all of the energy in the core of me is circulating. Judging by the headaches, hot flashes, and general blah I've been feeling I think I down right pissed off my Chi in a big way. Anyways, word of warning.
