{"id":58676,"date":"2012-06-28T00:01:25","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T04:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=58676"},"modified":"2012-06-27T23:19:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T03:19:13","slug":"health-care-uranus-pluto-square-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/astro-daily\/health-care-uranus-pluto-square-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"Health care, the Uranus-Pluto square, and Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m 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\u2019s big announcement is about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act \u2013 the one introduced by President Obama in 2010. You know the one<\/a>, but you may only know it by its derisive nickname, coined by the far Right and repeated by nearly everyone. Talk about successful brainwashing.<\/p>\n

\"Detail
Detail from my father’s dias de los muertos shrine, 2009. The base of the shrine was his black doctor’s bag that he’d used for most of his 40-year career, stood up on end, with the compartments on both sides opened up to form a triptych-like space. Photo by Amanda Painter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m not an expert on all this plan entails. A few years ago, when I worked<\/a> 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 \u2013 and for a while we thought we had made a real step in that direction. <\/p>\n

But I digress. My point was simply that now that I\u2019m not so actively part of the fight, I find tracking health care reform \u2013which, let\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think even the insurance industry was always this way, let alone medicine. Then again, maybe I\u2019ve simply been lucky enough to encounter a few individuals who \u2018get it\u2019. 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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> \u2013 a DO \u2013 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My father was not overly concerned with status, though I think he was aware of it. He didn\u2019t really care if people called him \u201cDoctor Painter,\u201d \u201cMister Painter\u201d or simply \u201cJohn.\u201d 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\u2019d simply written off rather than collect on. <\/p>\n

He was accessible, with our home phone number in the phone book \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 physical, emotional, psychological, familial \u2013 that might point to a problem or solution?<\/p>\n

I know there are doctors out there who come as close as the system will let them to \u2018doctoring\u2019 the way my father did. One of my theater friends is another DO. He\u2019s part of that Boomer generation right between my father\u2019s 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\u2019s the tip-off to what\u2019s really going on. He gives his patients hugs. He says from the moment he left medical school, he wanted to \u201cdo doctoring differently,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ll start to come back to heath care and away from health industry. <\/p>\n

I might be premature. I hate to think of how much worse things might have to get. Just like all college debt \u2013 but worse \u2013 today\u2019s medical students are entering practice with back breaking loans. People rarely sympathize with \u2018rich\u2019 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Medical school debt; private health insurance; political game-playing; too much screen time and not enough time outdoors; high-fructose corn syrup\u2026 that\u2019s just the beginning of the list of co-factors for the health care mess in this country. I have no idea if the President\u2019s plan is the answer. But it\u2019s an answer. With one Supreme Court justice likening the individual insurance mandate in the plan to being forced to buy broccoli, I\u2019m not sure I even trust this group of law-deciders to make a decision based on the constitution, let alone sound health policy. <\/p>\n

Is mandatory health insurance the answer or another part of the problem? I\u2019m not sure yet. Two things I do know, from calling people all over the state to talk about health care: you can\u2019t make good decisions about your health when you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m 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\u2019s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1734],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}