I’m sick!  Of health care talk, anyway

There’s alot of talk in the political arena about health care. About plans and coverage and limits and enforcement. And today, on a personal level, it feels like alot of talk. It feels like political pandering. It feels like people are trying to put a band-aid on a problem that’s bigger than just allowing everyone access to health care.

More and more when there’s an injury or an illness in my house, I turn to the internet so I can treat it myself. Why? Because I don’t like our family doctor. Because I don’t like to force unnecessary tests or medicines on my children. Because I don’t like sitting in a waiting room with sick children when we’re well or having my sick child expose others to their germs. Because I don’t like that our pediatrician likes to run blood and urine tests for almost everything. Because antibiotics are still so over-prescribed, even though we’re all supposed to know better.

But it’s not just doctor’s visits that annoy me. It’s the way health care coverage is organized, the way decisions are made, the way so many things aren’t covered by insurance. I want to know who decides what should be paid for and what shouldn’t. I want to know why doctor’s offices give so much time and attention to drug reps and so little to patients. I want to know why hospitals have “standards of care” that have more to do with rigid rules than either standards or care. I want to know why so little is done for the good of patients and so much is done for the sake of money. I also want to know why viagra is covered under many health insurance plans but homebirth isn’t. I want to know why acupuncture and massage therapy aren’t recognized as important parts of physical well-being. If it’s different, it seems, than it’s bad.

I’m sick of it honestly. I’m sick of the politics of it, as well. Our health care crisis is not just about having so many uninsured people, though that’s a huge problem, of course. Our health care crisis is also about lack of options, about lack of patient education, and about the gross abuse of the economics of health care. Can any of our candidates really fix these things? I don’t know; more and more, I’m cynical. More and more it seems like we’re too willing to accept less than we deserve; we’re so used to shoddy medical care, to long waits in the lobby and short consultations, to doctors and nurses who don’t listen to our entire problem, to quick diagnoses that are too often wrong, to being over-billed and under-insured. We have to stop accepting this crap and take some initiative to instigate change. Because, really, having insurance doesn’t solve these problems, doesn’t make it easier to access a good doctor or get good treatment. And that’s what we really need to solve this so called health care crisis. I’d like to see the candidates actually address that for a change.

Michelle Tucker is a political junkie, in a world full of them. She moved to Milwaukee from the south, and is still often surprised that it's OK to be a Democrat here; she's also quite in love with Russ Feingold (and Al Harris). Besides her political addiction, Michelle is a full-time student pursuing her Masters in Political Science, and is currently researching the influence of religion on American politics.