September 18, 2007

• Insurance

  Excuse me.  Right here at the start, I beg you to forgive any incoherence, venom, bias, or other unpleasantness in the following rant.  This essay has been inspired by a convergence of several factors, including:

  • Illness:  I am experiencing a severe exacerbation of M.E., myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue immunodysfunction syndrome.  This is an internationally recognized disorder, with established diagnostic and treatment protocols agreed upon by leading physicians in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas.  Despite the facts that a growing number of U.S. physicians are aware of M.E., and some of them even attended the international symposium that recommended the name, M.E. and the new protocols, to replace previous diagnoses such as, "fibromyalgia," and the ineffective and/or harmful treatments previously used, governmental agencies in the U.S. refuse to recognize it.
  • Politics:  Hillary Clinton, and reportedly all of the other major Democratic candidates with the lone exception of Barack Obama, are proposing to make health insurance mandatory.  The insurance industry is reportedly one of the primary reasons that NIH and CDC refuse to recognize the M.E. symposium's protocols and persist in the obsolete terminology and treatments.   It is widely accepted among the patient community, in online forums and blogs, that insurers and the "health" industry do not want to face the expense that would result if the magnitude of the problem was acknowledged, our true levels of disability were recognized, and M.E. patients began receiving appropriate treatment.
  • Hypocrisy:  Call it "spin" or PR if you like, but the public face of the insurance industry is as cynically hypocritical as any other business, and more so than most.  I recall when Blue Cross called their policies "hospitalization insurance."  When Blue Shield came along to cash in on the fears of those who thought their illness might not be serious enough to require hospitalization, they called it "medical insurance."  The marketing genius who was inspired to lump them together and call them "health insurance," as if one could, by paying for medicine and hospitalization, ensure health, deserves martyrdom, at the very least.  Let's not even get into what HMOs are actually devised to maintain.  Doctors don't like them; patients don't like them.  To find anyone who does like them you have to follow the money.
  • Psychology:  I know people who have used their insured vehicles as weapons or battering rams, who would have found some other way to vent their anger if they hadn't had the insurance.  I also know people who don't bother to take responsibility for their own physical wellbeing because they have "health insurance" to do it for them.  Never mind all the statistics detailing iatrogenic illness, mistaken diagnoses, inappropriate treatment, medication errors in hospitals, and the hardy poison-resistant strains of microorganisms that live mostly in hospitals until some unlucky patient happens to carry one out into the population.  Given the illusory benefits sold with insurance policies, most people are content to ignore their nutritional needs and the deleterious effects of some of their habits and addictions, relying on medicine for things that medicine cannot provide.
  • Metaphysics:  This might just be a subhead of "psychology," but the point is that when one buys insurance, one is in effect betting against oneself.  The only legitimate way to get a return on the investment is to lose, to suffer, to fall victim to whatever peril impelled one to buy the insurance in the first place.  "Energy flows where attention goes."

  There!  Got that off my chest.  Now I realize that I've been giving this way too much of my precious time, attention and energy.  I had intended to include a few more points, such as economics, but I think I'd be better served to pay more attention to my breathing... in... and out... and in again.
  

  • 6:33 pm
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