First treatment: the warped world of healthcare in the USA.

Imagine an advert on television telling you that if your doctor has sent you for some kind of extra screening, a breast examination, say, then you could actually have a rare congenital form of lung disease. 

Another example: an anti-psychosis drug designed to help with hallucinations and with a side effects list including other forms of psychosis and psychological effects is marketed to you as a sure fire way to cure your gastro-intestinal bleeding. (A link to the Haloperidol wikipedia page should provide explanation!)

Both sound completely ridiculous, right? And yet, the example above is a real example of an advert reaching millions of Americans during their prime time TV. Can you imagine How I met Your Mother cutting to tell you about your trans-vaginal mesh and how you are now going to need a massively invasive and expensive procedure to “cure” you of some inflammation you probably don’t have? The concept is almost as laughable as one of Barney’s purple suits.

These advertisements are obviously popular and effective, otherwise the drug marketing companies would not have enough money and clout to advertise on prime time. That means people are listening to these adverts, taking them seriously and pursuing the treatment they recommend. It also means that doctors and other medical professionals are complicit in making these treatments appear viable. 

All of which is extremely worrying. Advertisements such as these would be illegal in the UK, so why are they not more tightly controlled here? Obviously with the NHS there is less onus on the health industry to make a profit form their patients, whereas that principle is imperative in American healthcare. With America about to experience a massive shortage of doctors and other care givers with the onset of ObamaCare, this impending crisis in the integrity and success of healthcare has to be addressed. The US cannot go on allowing drug companies and private insurance firms to dictate the health and safety of it’s citizens for the sake of profit. Soon, with doctors and hospitals struggling to keep up with their workload, Americans will be forced to reconsider what they consider medication to mean, and what role drug companies and others must play in this new era of accessibility.

Violating conscience? Or unwilling to admit to one?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/us/catholic-groups-file-suits-on-contraceptive-coverage.html?hp

From bilgrimage.blogspot

 

Today Catholic groups, including the Archdioceses of New York and Washington D.C amongst others, filed suits with state courts to sue the Dept of Health for providing free contraception for women via employee health insurance cover. The reform to provide the contraception was one of the more controversial and lauded aspects of ObamaCare, ensuring female employees have free and easy access to contraception services without forcing employers to pay or actively provide it. Only the insurance brokers have any onus on them to provide the contraception, absenting all “responsibility” from the employer.

Complaining that the crisis of conscience is still plaguing the minds of good Catholic employers across the US, these groups have decided to test the law in traditionally conservative courts. The Obama administration has tried hard to placate the fears, pointing out that all the reforms ensure is that the decision to give free contraception to women is not dictated by employers, and is instead entirely accessible, as it is for all other women in the US.

Why a place of work, and employer, should have any right to dictate what and what is not right for an employee’s health and well being is beyond ken. The coverage of the problems of contraception versus religion privileges the ‘Crazy Christian’, ensuring that these groups will gain all the media coverage they need to further entrench the idea of free access to contraception as a “difficult” or “controversial” (anti)social agenda. Also, with Christianity as an ingrained feature of the American middle class consciousness, it further establishes these views as not a minority, but a majority view point. Although we might scoff at the idea of a Rastafarian pressure group suing the federal government for allowing employees of Rastafarian-run organizations being able to get a blood transfusion through their insurance policy, the absurdity of one situation is no different to the other. Just as so many more men appear on television/media proclaiming their views on women’s reproductive capabilities/sexual health choices, so too do many more Christian pressure groups gain greater coverage on the same polemic issues. These biases need to be recognized, and through comparison laughed out the dock for their nonsensical nature. Would the media create about Muslim employers seeking to ban all employees from having the right to consume bacon on any work premises/during working hours? No? Then why do we allow Christian employer groups to publicize their desires to control a body? Because it is a female body? Quite probably. More so because it is a female sexual body.

The other issue is, of course, is that the pill and other forms of birth control can have other medicinal purposes aside from contraception. Some forms of the pill are used in treating skin conditions, heavy menstrual bleeding, pain and depression, even in preventing some kinds of long term illnesses. Many teenagers are started on the pill in order to primarily help their acne, with contraception as an added advantage.What happens to those who take the pill not out of desire to be protected from getting pregnant, but who take it in order to treat something entirely unrelated to the whole babies issue?

I will be interested to see how many state courts decide to pick the case up and go directly against the will of Congress and the government to entertain these suits. Taking into account the US Constitution, technically any employee who has bought into an insurance policy, via an employer or no, has free access to the full range of care provided. The full range of care provided is that which is legally available in the US as a whole. Unless states manage to ban contraception medication, then the access to that medication has to be via whatever healthcare plan the individual has opted for, or else it contravenes individual rights to full access of private property (the bought health insurance).

The action by these Catholic pressure groups adds an extra layer to the developing anti-female reproductive health choice movements in the US. Will the Crazy Christians (TM) finally win their case through the US enshrined employer-benefit laws? A new direction, and one that could prove fruitful. But at the end of the day, who has more power? The supposedly secular administration? Or religious corporations?

We must stop this corporate takeover of American democracy | Bernie Sanders | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

We must stop this corporate takeover of American democracy | Bernie Sanders | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

 

This is an interesting and enlightening article from Bernie Sanders, the outspoken US senator for Vermont. Sanders has doggedly resisted inclusion into both of America’s political parties, and was the first member of the senate to openly identify himself as a socialist (though he does get lumped in with the Democrats on votes to make things a little easier). A dedicated critic of corporate power structures in America, this article serves as a kind of defense for his most recent protest.

Sanders has introduced a bill into the house that calls for an amendment to the constitution stipulating that corporations are not individuals. Common sense, no? We all know that a business or corporation is not a human being, and therefore comes under different regulatory codes. And yet, such a bill needs to be introduced (and passed) as a matter of urgency. The lobbyists behind SOPA have demonstrated the power of the corporate machine as it tries to rise over and above the freedom of speech. Sanders argues that through other such acts, the corporate stranglehold on America’s politics is slowly tightening its grip.

He predicts that soon, corporation lobbyists will argue for corporations to be given the same rights as are held by a free citizen. In other words, they will be treated as an individual American person, and not as a body coming under corporate, and not human, law. The corporations argue that they don’t have enough free speech within US politics. But to give them the right to complete freedom of speech, the power to fully endorse political campaigns and the power to fully infiltrate US government as part of an electorate, it is entirely possible that a corporation, and not the government, would soon be in control of America’s political, economic and social systems.

And how will that look? It certainly won’t look like democracy. Sanders is correct, people need to be reminded urgently that a corporation is a body of business, and not an individual. The current outcry against SOPA demonstrates that people all over the world are waking up to the devastating power America’s biggest corporations wield over the global political exchange. It can only be hoped that SOPA acts as a catalyst for reform, and certainly it appears that the lobbyists have lost this particular battle. If we forget the probability of a Supreme Court over-turn on SOPA should it ever come to a vote, actions such as Sanders can be taken as a definite step in the right direction. Now all we have to do is hope that the amendment, or something similar to it, be passed, and that such a seemingly simple question is not tossed aside as nothing more than ‘common sense’.