I’m writing on the eve of an important ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in a week that has seen a few of them. Although, what did we expect this week, with Uranus and Pluto squaring off precisely for the first time and a pseudo-Mercury retrograde ending (Venus in Gemini)? Thursday’s big announcement is about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – the one introduced by President Obama in 2010. You know the one, but you may only know it by its derisive nickname, coined by the far Right and repeated by nearly everyone. Talk about successful brainwashing.
I’m not an expert on all this plan entails. A few years ago, when I worked for a statewide citizen action non-profit, one of our primary goals was a universal single-payer health care system at the state level. Back then, I was always abreast of local, state and national health care issues. We were going to be the first state to get something meaningful on the books – and for a while we thought we had made a real step in that direction.
But I digress. My point was simply that now that I’m not so actively part of the fight, I find tracking health care reform –which, let’s face it, amounts to health insurance reform — to be even more confusing and frustrating than before. Part of that is, I think, due to the tremendous emphasis on the insurance industry to the detriment of both health and care.
I don’t think even the insurance industry was always this way, let alone medicine. Then again, maybe I’ve simply been lucky enough to encounter a few individuals who ‘get it’. When I was working for that non-profit, doing fund-raising calls, I had the pleasure of speaking to a man who said his grandfather had been the first president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine (which was swallowed by Anthem years ago). He said his grandmother used to be angry with her husband, because he refused every raise and bonus that was offered – believing instead that the money should go back into the program. When he retired, the new president automatically received double the salary. It was all downhill from there.
My father was a doctor for nearly 40 years, from the time he finished med school until about a month before his death three years ago this past Sunday. He was an osteopath – a DO – and worked for himself in a small, rural private practice that entire time. I get the impression that once upon a time, there used to be a lot more doctors like him – though that might be its own fairy tale. Certainly his was not a common breed in the last third of his practice; I sometimes wonder if there are any left now at all.
My father was not overly concerned with status, though I think he was aware of it. He didn’t really care if people called him “Doctor Painter,” “Mister Painter” or simply “John.” I think the fanciest car he owned was a Honda Accord in the 80s. After he died, one of his staff intimated to me there were a good number of patient bills he’d simply written off rather than collect on.
He was accessible, with our home phone number in the phone book – complete with instructions on the best way to catch him during dinner (or so it seemed). Sometime a decade or two ago he began limiting his house calls to children and the elderly. More than once the phone rang at some ungodly hour of the night, and out he would go.
I have no idea how long his appointments were scheduled for. I do know that when I worked briefly as a file clerk at a medical facility years ago, I was shocked to see the doctors double- and triple-booked for 15-minute appointments. How could they possibly get to know their patients well enough to notice the changes – physical, emotional, psychological, familial – that might point to a problem or solution?
I know there are doctors out there who come as close as the system will let them to ‘doctoring’ the way my father did. One of my theater friends is another DO. He’s part of that Boomer generation right between my father’s and mine, and we often talk about how he does things in his office and how my dad did them. My actor/doctor friend also listens for that telltale thing (a phrase, a tone of voice, a fleeting facial expression) that’s the tip-off to what’s really going on. He gives his patients hugs. He says from the moment he left medical school, he wanted to “do doctoring differently,” and now his office is on the verge of offering on-site physical training instruction, to get over the intimidation and motivation barriers to trying things at a gym.
I asked him if he owned his own practice, since sounded like he did. He kind of rolled his eyes in resignation, saying that was virtually impossible in the world of managed care these days. Apparently my father was, actually, part of a dying breed. That said, sometimes I think I see glimmers of hope that, at the very least, the pendulum has just about swung far enough that it’ll start to come back to heath care and away from health industry.
I might be premature. I hate to think of how much worse things might have to get. Just like all college debt – but worse – today’s medical students are entering practice with back breaking loans. People rarely sympathize with ‘rich’ doctors. But the young ones, especially, are in the same bind as anyone leaving higher education these days. And while many are envious that they seem to have the means to pay off that debt, do you really want the money to be a doctor’s focus? My actor/doctor friend makes no bones about telling anyone considering medicine that the only reason to go into it is because you love doing it. If money is your goal, you will be miserable in this profession.
Medical school debt; private health insurance; political game-playing; too much screen time and not enough time outdoors; high-fructose corn syrup… that’s just the beginning of the list of co-factors for the health care mess in this country. I have no idea if the President’s plan is the answer. But it’s an answer. With one Supreme Court justice likening the individual insurance mandate in the plan to being forced to buy broccoli, I’m not sure I even trust this group of law-deciders to make a decision based on the constitution, let alone sound health policy.
Is mandatory health insurance the answer or another part of the problem? I’m not sure yet. Two things I do know, from calling people all over the state to talk about health care: you can’t make good decisions about your health when you’re on the brink of losing everything you own; and the people most likely to be willing to put their resources on the line for change are rarely those with the most money.
In the late 60s the small town doctor who delivered me and my 4 brothers was crushed to death when a sleeping truck driver ran over his VW beetle. The doctor was making a 2 am house call out into the country. Going to the doctor was never the same after that, as his death coincided with the rise of the Hospital Corporation.
Thank you for introducing us to your father. Good man.
As someone who for 20 years has not met a malady I can’t heal in myself with the aid of food, herbs in the meadow, essential oils, rest and a little help from a massage therapist or sex magic, I do resent being told I am irresponsible if I don’t buy health insurance that I may never need (then again, I might, and I hope what ails me will be covered in that case). Whatever THEY do, we must know our true power, the power of what makes us healthy, as individuals, communities, and a planet.
Amanda,
My very first physician, had a small little office near the center of town, that when we were on deaths door, we were brought in to be examined. It was cash only back then, and if you needed to be hospitalized….if my memory serves me correctly, there was hospital insurance. My first dentist went to school with my parents, had a little box of gold rings that I chose from when I was finished, and out the door I went…bill sent to the house. Now here I am looking at the other side of 40, spent the last 23 of those years in healthcare as a nurse. Its been a love/hate relationship. I watched an industry…(hint) take private practices and sqeeze them out weather they wanted to or not. I wish I could get a glimpse of the long term goal that was projected at that time…this couldn’t have been it. If there was anytime to dump your stethescopes over the boat, and take your stand it would be now. If I were a physician, I would be more than pissed off. Did the insurance company cover your school costs, yet find it ok to profit over your expertise<and tell you what you can and cannot order for your patient, from drugs to medical tests to even if you can see them twice in the same week..not to mention the malpractice insurance one needs now due to the profit margin for error{why not, insurance companies can't be the only ones profiting from ones ailments}.its absolute baloney. Not to mention all the unnecessary testing that takes place due to our sue happy society. You go in with a headache and your being airlifted for an MRI (well…just sayin). I want to add to that, the chances of gross negligence from a doctors care is slim…yet shit happens anyway…and for that reason, malpractice is needed. If drug companies can inundate us with commercials protecting their profit margin with gross side effects burp%…I think I am rambling now…point being, we need change and we need it soon…
Peace and Love,
Patricia
Be, this is so interesting thank you for bringing this to us/light. Transforming, evolving from within. Liberating the inefferable, finding our true natures that are beyond “our selfs” – it is being one through connectedness.
Thank you-
Thank you Amanda. As a bodywork practitioner I have a great respect for the Osteopathic tradition, as it is the source of much of my practice (Biodynamic Craniosacral and Polarity Therapy), and because the DO’s like your father practiced medicine in a manner that is now mostly alien to people in America. Your sharing this morning lights a fire in me to meet my clients and students with the same care your dad brought to his work.
Amanda: Thank you for a work of beauty, as tenderly felt as it is acutely observed. Combined with your tale of Miss Molly yesterday, you are once again a hero, helping all of us stay in touch with our hearts while keeping our heads on straight.
Amanda, thank you for giving us this perspective, and for sharing your Father’s shrine… a lovely reminder of the simpler way things used to be, ought to be and now the sad reality of the broken system we find ourselves in today. I hope the bill’s outcome brings positive change. Well, it’s a movement/start anyway.
PS
Well, here’s a small nugget of info from the chart for the announcement from the SCOTUS re: Healthcare law. (and many thanks to the Universe for returning Serennu’s website to life) Something to ponder at this historic time.. .
At 0 Libra we find the symbols of Pandora (the opening of a box of unexpected stuff), Astraea (I will never leave you), Minerva (aka Pallas-Athene, who figures things & people out), and Klotho (beginnings) at a Personal-is-Political “Aries” point. This is the Sabian Symbol for this degree with a few observations about it from Dane Rudhyar’s An Astrological Mandala:
IN A COLLECTION OF PERFECT SPECIMENS OF MANY BIOLOGICAL FORMS, A BUTTERFLY DISPLAYS THE BEAUTY OF ITS WINGS, ITS BODY IMPALED BY A FINE DART
“At this autumnal point [0 Libra], the drive toward individuation and self-assertion has lost much of its momentum. . .while a new trend is challenging. . . the trend toward the formation of collectivities of individuals.”
“This symbol. . describes a ‘perfect form’ – the result of the metamorphosis of ‘worm’ into butterfly, a process the symbolism of which has so often been used to indicate to man the possibility of his being transformed into ‘more-than-man’, the trans-human being, the true Initiate, the Adept, the Perfect.”
So it sounds like evolution to me, and teamwork between the Pisces Neptune et al and a rogue band of Libran Lady Asteroids. For now there is peace in this valley (Ohio) albeit 100+ degrees outside!
be
Thank you, Amanda. I’m happy to meet this wonderful man and happier still to inspire others to manifest the system of care we all know we deserve.
I know our President is good and right to try to work within the system but here we are dealing with the insurance companies dictating what’s in their best interests rather than ours. I was really pulling for that Public Option (and I know President Obama was too) and now feel a certain ambivilence toward this whole endeavor. Yes, I realize it’s a start but really until we find a way to get the monied interest from running our own government, we’re running in place.
Sorry to be so dismal. But I, too, know a great doctor (my own doctor here in PA, who would spend all kinds of time with me) and would that we could all have such care. What in the world will it take to get special interests from writing the bills and controling our lives … yep, Eric said it so well: revolution, nothing less I’m thinking.
mm.
Yeah! Thanks for posting the link, lucky! And thanks for your interesting and moving piece, Amanda. Am interested to see what else you guys ‘over there’ will have to say about all this.
Here it is!
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/supreme-court-issue-obamacare-decision-135554880.html
P.S. The Sabian Symbol for the Sun right now is .. . A GROUP OF RABBITS DRESSED IN HUMAN CLOTHES WALK AS IF ON PARADE (“. . first attempts at developing consciousness and furthering one’s growth through association with those who have already reached a superior evolutionary or mental level.”) per Dane Rudhyar
be
Geez Amanda, where did we go wrong? Well, the fact that we are aware that we went wrong must be the first stage of fixing the problem(s). This was a great article; thanks for sharing. I’m still holding out hope (!?!) that with Neptune, along with Chiron, Asclepius and Hygiene gathered together in Pisces; that’s FIVE symbols of the healing professions and services in one narrow band of degrees, means that intervention of a kind between the harshness of the Uranus-Pluto square will be the result. The “higher consciousness” implied in the Decile aspect between Neptune and Uranus might indicate that the Supremes recognize the setback of wiping out all the gruelling work that went into bringing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into being. Or it could do just the opposite I suppose, what with Neptune never being in reality what it appears to be, and Uranus’ unpredictability in any aspect. But look at all the attention to thinking about this subject that this brouhaha has engendered! Imagine the push-back (against the Supremes, another facet of government that needs major cleansing, as well as against the Repubs) if the decision goes south.
Some observations of the U.S. Progressed (Sibly) chart have me equally divided over what they mean. For example the Progressed Atlantis at 23+ Gemini puts it in position to conjunct the U.S. natal Mars (21+ Gemini) and square the natal Neptune (22+ Virgo) and its near where transiting Mars went retrograde in January. Prog. Atlantis is also where Venus went retro last month and where she will trine Saturn from next month. So, is that good or bad? How do we interpret Atlantis for Pete’s sake?
Then there’s progressed U.S. Nessus at 8+ Pisces (also where natal Nessus is and conjuncts natal Ceres), where the Neptune gang is located now, and which conjuncts the progressed U.S. Sun at 7+ Pisces and squares the progressed Uranus (7+ Gemini) and natal Uranus (8+) Gemini, which is where Venus is and where she stationed yesterday. I mean, this is centaur energy. . how many times do we have to face this tragic situation in our country, deal with it and then fix it for Pete’s sake?
Well maybe we will get some answers in 10 minutes or so.
be