Shirin Vossoughi Vossoughi is a
fourth-year history and international development studies student
who encourages you to speak your mind at shirinv@ucla.edu. Click
Here for more articles by Shirin Vossoughi
Over the weekend, moviegoers across the nation saw “John
Q,” the story of one man taking a hospital room hostage to
get his son the heart transplant he could not afford.
Some critics say the story is unrealistic. Others say it incites
violence. But aside from the melodrama and Hollywood’s need
for happy endings, the movie hits on one of America’s most
shameful flaws: our failure to provide people with health care, a
basic human right.
“John Q’s” emphasis on the lack of available
organs for transplant is all too real. With a drastic shortage in
organ availability and the difficulty uninsured patients have
paying for them, 16 people die everyday waiting for an organ.
But the film also reveals another layer of the crisis in the
increasingly profit-driven state of health care: health maintenance
organizations.
Originally designed to control costs, HMOs are systems of
“managed care” that encourage doctors and nurses to
make the cheapest medical decisions, which are not necessarily the
best ones. They have played a significant role in decreasing the
independence of doctors while turning the nation’s health
care system into a marketed product. With patients’ critical
medical decisions now in the hands of corporate reviewers, profit
takes priority over what’s best for individuals.
Last week, another 80,000 workers who were laid-off saw an end
to their health care benefits, pushing the number of uninsured
Americans close to 45 million. With the recession robbing many more
of both jobs and benefits, the need for a universal health care
system could not be more urgent.
Yet, the prospects look dim for the current administration to
move toward this. To imagine what will happen to health care under
Bush, just take a quick glance at the mess he left behind in Texas.
By the time his term as governor was up, 1 million children were
denied proper health care while 51 percent of low income adults
were uninsured ““ the worst figure in the nation (Boston
Globe, Sept 8, 2000).
Since Bush moved up to Washington, predictions for a national
decline in health care are already manifest. Tax cuts and a
ballooning defense budget means slashing social spending. Middle
and low-income Americans must sacrifice their health so that the
rich get their tax cuts and the military gets its toys.
Case in point: A new federal study reported Monday in the New
York Times states that nine out of 10 nursing homes have too few
workers to administer proper care to patients. Inadequate care
results in an increased likelihood of bedsores, malnutrition,
weight loss, pneumonia and serious blood-borne infections.
Oftentimes, there is not enough staff to feed those who cannot eat
on their own. At a Tampa, Fla., nursing home, patients were found
in wet, unchanged beds.
Bush’s response? A rejection of requiring minimum staffing
levels in hopes that “market forces” and increased
nurse productivity will solve the problem on their own. Despite the
report’s thorough account of substandard care, the Bush
administration stated, “We do not think there is currently
sufficient information upon which to base a federal requirement for
all certified nursing homes, and any requirement would have to be
balanced against cost” (NY Times, Feb. 18).
“Costs” are measured in dollar signs, not human
lives.
The reality is that market forces do not care about
people’s health. At every turn, decisions made in favor of
profit jeopardize people’s lives, proving that the economic
logic of the business world has no place in a nation’s health
care system.
Yet many Americans willingly make sacrifices in favor of defense
spending by an administration that shows blatant disregard for the
defense of its own people against harm incurred by lack of
insurance. If Bush and his team were truly patriotic, perhaps they
would acknowledge the lack of access to basic health care faced by
many of those they supposedly represent.
For those who think full health coverage is a myth, the United
States is the only Western nation (the richest one, too) without
universal health care. All around us, alternative models abound. In
Canada, a universal health care program started at the provincial
level and then went national, providing “cradle to
grave” coverage; the same coverage is offered in many
countries of the European Union.
With the release of “John Q,” some hospitals fear
the film’s “violent” account will induce copycat
behavior, provoking desperate people to take aggressive actions
(San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 9). But the use of violence is not
limited to pulling a gun and taking people hostage. Cost-cutting
policies that leave millions without health care constitute a
structural form of violence that is equally cruel.
When a pregnant mother goes without prenatal care, an elderly
person spends their last days in agony or a child dies because her
family can not afford adequate treatment, is that not violence? Is
it not worse when such tragedies are entirely preventable?