By Saswat Pattanayak

Let’s talk about healthcare today. Logically, the most neglected sector in an individualistic society.

Needless to say, healthcare is not a state responsibility anywhere in the world. Even as the unwell are left to fend for themselves, they always have been needed to take care of financial needs of the medical professionals. As is with the doctors, representing a class of elites, they most certainly tend to their class interests. Hence the rich in the society get the best treatment and the poor are left in the lurch.

The irony however is that the poor, owing to health habits and sanitation practices are more likely to get affected and owing to their economic conditions, they are less likely to get treated. Statistics convene the direct correlation between wealth and health.

This is nothing surprising here, since it’s merely logical. What however is shocking, are the ways in which the ruling powers boast of their healthcare sectors to normalize the contrary claims to be unfounded. It works when one asks if there is a class system in society, and gets a prompt reply “Class? What class?”

Within the healthcare sector in the United States, for example, there are approximately 45 million people officially, who are without health insurance coverage. The number of uninsured rose 1.4 million annually (according to a study published by U.S. Census Bureau., August 2004 and prepared officially by DeNavas-Walt, C., B. Proctor, and R. J. Mills, titled “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States&rdquo. Nearly 82 million -- about one-third of the population below the age of 65 spent a portion of a year without health coverage.

Millions of workers don't have the opportunity to get coverage. A third of firms in the U.S. do not offer coverage. According to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Employee Health Benefits: 2004 Annual Survey published in September 2004, rapidly rising health insurance premiums is the main reason cited by firms for not offering coverage. Health insurance premiums are rising at extraordinary rates. Over the past five years the average annual increase in inflation has been 2.5 percent while health insurance premiums have escalated an average of 11.4 percent annually.

Of course, I am sure people are quite familiar with the figures. What however is often missed from the central discussion is the way a systematic class division thrives in healthcare sector, leading to even further (more than 80% of) disguised healthcare benefit losses. For example, a HMO deals with a provider/Individual Practitioner Association that maintains its own centralized medical facilities. In order to receive treatment, an individual must go to one of the HMO's facilities only. This is the least expensive and most enrolled division and naturally enough, it’s most limited by choices.

The Point-of-Service (POS) plans, a relatively new concept in the health insurance industry combine the a limited freedom of choice with the medical management of a primary care physician typically found in HMOs. This costs way more than the HMOs. The third, which is the Preferred Provider Networks (PPO), is a group of doctors that has agreed to discount their fees for services in exchange for access to a group of subscribers. PPOs also provide one with the choice of using either a network doctor or a doctor of one’s own choosing. This type of plan gives the real freedom of choice because one can go to a specialist without a referral from any primary care physician.

With such clear class divisions—ranging from the patients limited by a few doctors to the doctors limited to a few patients—among healthcare, the elitist bias pervades beyond the obvious.

The latest issue of Rolling Stone has Robert Kennedy Jr. describing how the US government, after causing 15 fold increase in autism within its own population has decided to spread the same to China (after a couple of years I am sure autism will be alleged to be of Chinese origin).

Since 1991, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children. Kennedy says:

More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. ……The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical.

The article reveals the nature of medical profession as evolved today. From the elitist enrolments in rated schools in order to hike the rate of the doctors in the market to their heightened professional roles they play in staying detached from the patient welfare, to their collusion with the pharmaceutical companies which sponsor anything for them –free world tour to wine bottles—in lieu of their assured prescriptions of certain drugs over certain others, to finally allowing the profession be ruined by political will to shove corporate agenda down the throats of the unwell-financially and emotionally.

Not unusually then, the doctors have no connection with the Hippocrates Oath whatsoever. I am not even sure if today’s medical professionals go through the Oath made around 400 BC (some portions of it of course, like all classical texts, need radical corrections), where some thoughts about social commitments of doctors, stand as a wishful thought for the day in a competitively engaged inhuman society as ours is reduced today to:

I SWEAR by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation- to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons laboring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or not, in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times! But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!

(THE OATH by Hippocrates: Translated by Francis Adams)

Tags: Saswat, Health, Capitalism, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

Bob Dylan in the Spring 1965 documentary “Don’t Look Back” (made by D.A. Pennebaker) is seen to be refusing to give an interview to the Time magazine reporter. After the reporter persists, Dylan finally says that he would not talk to that magazine because its read by the elites, who else?

Exactly 40 years have passed since. On its December 20, 2004 issue, which by no means an unimportant issue-this being one of the year end and ‘best-photos-of-the-year’ issue-Time has come up with the cover story: “The new science of Sleep”.

In its 10-page spread of why sleep is needed, Christine Gorman reveals citing some research (and believe me, I am still looking for that research in her texts) that sleep indeed is needed for the brain, not for body.

Well, lets say that’s alright, but what’s the news? If not news, what’s new? If not new, what’s profound?

Here it is. The larger picture today is that of social unrest following a political system that took charge once again. The larger picture is that of youth apprehensions about the war that’s caused so that it will perpetuate the fear psychoses. The larger picture is that more critical questions are surfacing today than they ever did before in terms of social justice, but fewer are actually being asked due to the fear factor of being termed unpatriotic or even a terrorist.

When the mind is working more than the body (lets say in the process of my blogging at midnight on a computer communicating this to you, my body works less than my mind) there is a problem to the people who wants to replace the larger picture with a myopic vision full of non-issues. Hence, the researchers (whoever they are and again let me state I could not find which researches provided the ‘fresh clues’-as said on the cover) working at such a theory of sleep that says the more we sleep the smarter we become is little exaggerated. Why else would I have the knowledge of Gandhi having maintained a four-hour-sleep-a-night routine? Or all the prolific scholars I have seen in my short life actually being smart, staying smart and staying awake most of the day and the night?

Why Time magazine would want such a cover story is not surprising. It has countless frivolous cover stories in the past in most regular intervals that will surprise just about anyone. But precisely because of that, the regularity of such cover events, it has succeeded in letting such them get past to its readers, some of whom must have more or less got normalized into believing that this is the big issue.

Health is definitely a much bigger concern than what the president has to say over the thanksgivings dinner. Its because health issue affects all, republican or democrat or the rest of us. Its also true that we have really got bored of the political coverages, maybe because they are of a very similar ‘he-said-this-then-he-refuted-that’ types. The second most popular theme, entertainment is another horrible domain. At times political stories are as entertaining as entertainment stories can be political. But entertainment stories in mainstream press are considered for the so-called entertainment value only reducing them to irrelevance.

Look at the Johnny Cash cover on Time recently. No political mention at all. Or even look at Dylan becoming a top 100 entertainer in Time. One can only gauge the extent to which entertainers are forcibly separated from their social stands so that the audience only applauds, not join.

After utterly monotonous political stories and extremely redundant entertainment rumors, one would only look at the health section with some hope. And this is precisely what Time understands well. Since the stakes are high, the health stories are manufactured in a subtle manner to send out a clear message. Subtle insofar as political mentions go amiss, clear insofar as the cover stories proclaim of some researches providing some clues.

Funny but true. A sleeping nation doth not stay awake and liberty can be attained only by a vigilant citizenry. At the juncture of history when we see partisan politics jeopardizing personal decisions based on sexual preferences, and the most number of youths are being sent to fight a war that has absolutely no basis other than false rhetorics and when we face the biggest challenges of unemployment and healthcare in recent times, to lull the country to sleep is the best available method to prevent any form of agitation.

One of the six advices Time offers: “no computers, no TV or arguments before sleep. Soothing music and mysteries are OK.”
Soothing and mysteries. You bet, the world is one peaceful thing for fantasizing in soothing music.

Illusion, like sleep, is a state of mind.

Tags: Saswat, Health, Media, Capitalism

Lets have a fresh look at the AIDS epidemic:

* The epidemic remains extremely dynamic, growing and changing character as the virus exploits new opportunities for transmission.
* Girls and young women are at greatest risk. As of December 2003, women accounted for nearly 50% of all people living with HIV worldwide, and for 57% in sub-Saharan Africa.
* Young people (15–24 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide; more than 6000 contract the virus each day.
* The 2001 UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS envisions major progress in delivering comprehensive care services by 2005. However, only minimal coverage has been achieved for care and treatment of HIV-related disease. Current prevention efforts in most low- and middle-income countries come nowhere near the scale of the epidemic.
* Achieving the 2005 targets will require urgent, innovative and expanded efforts to strengthen and accelerate the response.

The UN report just released is alarming, to say the least.

Tags: Saswat, Health, News, Feminism

Psychiatric disabilities are steadily growing and costing companies in lost productivity and employee absenteeism.
According to American Psychological Association, for example, at Bank One--now J.P. Morgan Chase--employees' mental health issues from 2000–2002 accounted for the second leading cause of short-term disability and were second in total of days absent from work--behind only pregnancy.
One is left only to wonder, if the concern is for absent employees or the sick employees. If its the sick, are they sick because of the workplace pressures themselves?

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, News, Health