Single Payer Health Care for Vashon
Feb
28
Written by:
2/28/2010 7:42 PM
The following went to the Loop Feb 28
At the present time true healthcare at the national level is impossible because what is called reform is hampered not only by the immense power of the established way but also by a warped idea of what health care is. The following describes the warp and goes on to suggest an about face alternative for Vashon.
As now practiced, “healthcare” is insurance against failure of our health. Like auto insurance it pays for repair. Like auto insurance costs rise relentlessly as technology inexorably finds new ways for drugs and surgery to muck about with God’s image. Like auto insurance the primary objective is profit. Consequently, when a community attempts to wrest control from the insurance industry it finds itself a pauper in an expensive hightech system. It dosn’t have to be that way.
The community has two powerful concepts with which to bring about sensible healthcare for its members. They are community currency and preventive care. These will be sketched followed by a look at drug costs and elective surgery.
It’s now common knowledge that Federal Reserve currency flew us to the moon but also was the primary cause of the great depression: the issuer rules the country to the wish of the bond traders. A community currency can be designed to accomplish two essential goals: enable trade, and utilize latent resources. For example, faith in the community can create the credit needed for building a new clinic. For example, a single mother can till somebody’s garden to get dental care for her child. All obvious, so what stands in the way, why haven’t we tried? We’re so hooked on the omnipotent dollar we are unwilling to adjust to another life. Were we to try, we would set up a dual currency in which gradual shift away from the dollar could happen. The success of a dual currency rests on a third essential goal for the community currency, equivalence with the dollar. This is indeed tricky turf but competant authorities stand ready to help pull it off. Given the dual currency, a local healthcare facility becomes feasible to build, and anybody who can breathe and is sentient can contribute in some way toward hiserher basic healthcare.
This brings us to the idea of what should constitute healthcare. Medicare, so excellent in its administration, does not pay for checkups. Well then, is there a consensus on the basis of staying healthy? I’ve not found one. So the first step in designing locally funded single payer healthcare is to get that consensus. First to be addressed is preventive care. Nutrition, certainly. Basic pharmacology (generics), of course. Natural remedies, well of course, provided Kathy and Laurel can sort them out. In fact, sorting out herbal versus conventional remedies surely is a cornerstone of affordable prevention. I think it is wrong for Kathy and Laurel to have left the sorting to us laymenwomen. Unsorted, we sum up: preventive care should include a lot of aspects now considered beyond coverage by HMOs. Secondly, beyond prevention there are diagnosis, therapy, and surgery. Here we are at the great intersection of family and specialist medicine. I tremble. Should Vashon include endoscopy in basic care? I think a review would leave that one out, but clearly a panel of local doctors would make such calls. What such a panel would not do, however, is central to locally funded single payer healthcare: reaching a consensus that the human body is to be treated as a whole. It is up to the community to insist that a whole-body review is not only funded but required as a matter of course in arriving at diagnosis and care.
Overall, locally funded single payer healthcare appears to be an attractive and sensible possibility. Reaction to the idea when presented to the Community Council last year was a dead silence. As long as we are wedded to the Federal Reserve that response is understandable. A Vashon single payer is possible only in a dual currency economy, even given the foregoing consensus on care. So it’s a big step. Drug costs remain high, but in addition to possible group purchase savings there is the long range reward of whole body prevention touched on above. As to expensive surgery and chemotherapy, Vashon single payer would not cover them. Some mitigation of distress for those without the means might be achieved by an optional dollar fund, an emergency kitty. Nevertheless, this issue does not in any way cast a shadow on the grail of local single payer health care.