Sarah Burke: A death that demands we do SOMETHING about universal healthcare

Engraving of an imagined druid's grove. Both yew and oak were sacred to druids, as was the whole earth and everything on it. (Wiki commons)

Some days, you just have to go with the flow.

Today was supposed to be about getting ready for a short, important trip. And about walking the dog since she’ll be caged for a few days. And about promoting my novel (shameless promotion: humorous mystery, Crash Course by Nicky McBride, on Kindle).

But it’s not. It’s about the real needs of people and how those needs have been crushed under the heels of the fearless hunters among us, the recipients of DNA that offers brawn without brain, humanity without compassion and ignorance without respite. In short, the modern corporation man. (NOTE: I will use the masculine pronoun, not because I’m anti-feminist, but because casting females in a role the feminine principle does not support is ludicrous.)

This rumination was occasioned by an article a friend posted on Facebook. The article notes that Canadian half-pipe skier Sarah Burke died in a hospital in the US, meaning her parents are socked with a bill for a couple hundred grand. Had she died in Canada―had an AMERICAN skier died in Canada, in fact―there would have been no such bill. In Canada, as in most of developed nations, people are not denied healthcare, nor are they bankrupted when an unavoidable situation develops in which they are given health care whether they want it or not.

Out cold, but not out in the cold. Whew!

About 20 years ago, I was tossed off a horse, knocked out cold, and concussed. I awoke briefly a couple of times; during one lucid interlude, the barn staff told me they had called the ambulance. “Oh, no,” I said. “I’d rather just go home.” Sure. Wouldn’t anyone who had no recollection of what had happened and saw little but a sort of swimmy green jacket? But, though I actually had health insurance at the time because I actually worked for someone else (a rarity), I was so used to NOT availing myself of any sort of medicine that the first thing in my mind when I was just barely conscious (and not for long) was, “NO, please don’t call the medics. I can’t afford it.” I next awoke in the hospital with a friend standing next to me. And then I was out again, thankfully until after the CAT scan. She, a graphic artist, asked to watch it; she told me later I did have a brain. Nice.

Anyway, my little story is as nothing compared to what so many have faced. And further, my little dance with healthcare that time cost me about $600, as had the first of the two incidents I’ve ever had. And both times, I was totally responsible; it wasn’t an illness or disease or disorder. It was my choice to ride crazy horses. And I was damn lucky.

Maybe it is because of that luck that I feel so firmly that it is unconscionable for any society to bankrupt those whose encounters with the healthcare industry are unavoidable, if indeed they get the care in the first place. It might be said that Sarah Burke’s injury was self-inflicted, as was mine. She was engaged, by choice, in a dangerous sport. As was I. As I said, I was damn lucky.

Life is dangerous; So what?

But what of that? Should we never get any exercise, never push the envelope of what humans can do? It is bad enough that you can’t get coverage if you tick the box for riding motorcycles, flying a plane and assorted other things the tunnel-visioned actuaries think are dangerous. I was just lucky there, too; they haven’t figured out yet that riding horses over fences is a dangerous sport.  I just happened, during brief interludes of employment, to be covered by health insurance when a problem arose. But if I could have afforded insurance when I was freelance, I wouldn’t have been denied since equine sports have gotten a pass from the dodos at Theft Coverage USA.

What’s a society to do? Whatever it takes. And that does not include preventing talented people in sports or any human pursuit from fulfilling their life’s work or passion.

Each of the ancient Celtic tribes supported their healers in toto. They also supported their spiritual leaders. And they supported their poets, the keepers of their history and mores, the creators of beauty in words and often music, and sometimes other forms of art. Healers―druids or shamans, if you like―had no other task but to be available to heal members of the tribe. Spiritual guides, ovates, had no other task but to help members of the tribe in their relationship with the earth mother, each other, themselves. Bards―poets, musicians, historians, artists―had no other task but to create beauty and convey from one generation to the next the truth of the tribe.

In no case does America honor its druids, ovates and bards. Oh, sure. Some doctors get amazingly wealthy; is that honoring them? No. It is paying them out of individual pockets for tightly controlled use of their special skills.

Millionaire clergy; contradiction in terms

Some religious leaders become millionaires; is it because their pastoral care is available to all of their tribe―or to visitors―who ask? No, it is because they have developed a firm grasp of fund-raising, television, or both.

And some artists become quite wealthy. Look at J.K. Rowling. Look at Angelina Jolie. Look at the late Michael Jackson. Is it because they offer their gift willingly to the tribe that supports them? No. Not at all. In the case of Rowling (one of my favorite rants as some will know), she borrowed from other tribes’ work, and when she got rich, she set about using the courts to ensure others could not profit from any work even passingly similar to her own derivative one. Bona fide bards help other bards to develop, to learn from them the skills and information needed to become good bards, who will in due course be supported by their tribe.

Angelina Jolie finds adoption to be a nice path to fame and fortune, piggybacking her possible acting gift (a druidic calling and worthwhile to society) on her self-promotion gift (a corporate, hunter sort of thing to do. I expect we should just be happy a few children find a home as a collateral benefit.) 

And Michael Jackson, who had a true gift, was so lumbered with the insanities of his family and the lust of his fans that there was no chance he could express his gift for the asking in peace during a long life. As a bard should do.

The Druid model is all we need

It is all skewed. It is skewed in the ways that the powerful hunters think best. It is skewed in the ways that will enable the powerful hunters to choose who the druids, bards and ovates will be, and who in the tribe has access to their gifts, and even which of their gifts will be deemed acceptable by the hunters.

Time to give it up.

In homeopathy, the easiest part of the body to heal will experience recovery first, followed by the deeper tissues, and finally proceeding to the spirit level―to the constitution―and correcting its anomalies. So I think it is right to tackle health care first. For all the misery its lack causes, that lack is not a malady in itself but rather an expression of deeper maladies in the body politic. So, if we correct access to medical care, then next we will begin to truly see what is the matter with our spiritual leadership and take it out of the hands of martinets and oligarchs and return it to the gentle spiritual healers of old who actually cared for their tribe. And once that is on its way to health, maybe we will begin to support the bards―the poets, artists, musicians―who fill our newly opened souls with joy and who chronicle the way we are for the delight and education of generations yet to come.

It’s a nice dream―I try to live in it at least once a day―and it’s one I’m hoping will come true.

Scottish doctors target supermarket booze

Treating symptoms and not the disease

As might be expected, Scottish doctors are on the rampage yet again. First, it was homeopathy, and now it’s alcohol.

In both cases, they fail to recognize the fundamental demands of ethics and humanity.

Regarding their demand that homeopathy be disregarded…no, that it be forcibly trashed by removing homeopathics from the shelves of Boots and other chemists and adding labels saying the medications are useless…please see yesterday’s column.

Regarding their demand that supermarkets not award loyalty points for purchases of alcohol, they are failing to note two significant cultural thrusts, one of which might reduce alcoholism despite loyalty points or any other commercial activity, and the other of which would place the onus for neo-Prohibitionism where it properly lies.

The first cultural factor is this: As of June 30, 2010, the picture of Sir Edward Elgar, foremost British composer of classical and religious music, is being replaced on the 20 pound note with a picture of economist Adam Smith. The government of the United Kingdom has therefore given tacit encouragement to the replacement of cultural heroes by commercial pundits. No one has yet definitively proven whether the theories of Adam Smith or Milton Friedman or Maynard Keynes or Mickey Mouse are the ones most likely to lead to the long-term economic health of nations.

On the other hand, that nations need a vibrant culture, including fine arts, music, dance and even crafts, to thrive cannot be denied. Look, for example, at the state of Afghanistan, where the arts were systematically outlawed by the outlaw Taliban. There is no beauty, no ease, no reason, really, to thrive but only to survive, and that at a basic level. Look at Soviet Russia, in which the only art allowed made giants of puny men, erecting paintings and statues of the unworthy in every public place to indoctrinate the masses. Note: It didn’t work for long.

The Scottish doctors, in their mad rush to blame alcohol itself and the means by which it is purchased for alcohol abuse are mistaking the symptom for the disease. The disease is an impoverished society, in which true cultural heroes are dismissed and mechanics who merely tinker with the conduct of life, rather than investigating the nature of life, are elevated. One cannot hear a passage written by Adam Smith and be transported beyond one’s mundane self; on the other hand, one can hear a composition by Elgar and be transported to a more refined realm, a place where commercial grasping is not seen as the stuff of life.

That is not to say that one must favour classical music to develop as a human, but that classical music is one way. Music, whether Elgar or Elton John, can lift human thoughts beyond that night’s soup, or that day’s corporate takeover. The prescriptions of economists of any age cannot. If a society replaces all cultural heroes such as Elgar with commercial mechanics such as Adam Smith, one can expect a descent into alcoholism and other forms of brutality, as the population will gradually become unfamiliar with the other gifts available to the human psyche to make life a joy and not a drudgery.

The Scottish doctors are missing another extremely cogent point―as cogent in the current climate as the dismissal of culture in favour of economic mechanics: The  movement to crack down on drunk driving has been hijacked and turned into neo-Prohibitionism, much to the dismay of the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Candy Lightner. Briefly, Lightner’s teenage daughter was killed by a drunk driver who got off with an unbearably light sentence. An enraged Lightner vowed to bring drunk driving to national attention in the US, with the goal of toughening sanctions against it and punishment for it.

However, a few years ago, Lightner was quoted regarding the organization she founded and then left this way? “It [MADD] has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I ever wanted or envisioned. I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.” (For more, see an article on the blog Alcohol Problems and Solutions maintained by David J. Hanson, Ph.D., at the State University of New York at Potsdam, here.)

Lightner has reportedly had three drunk driving arrests herself. If one assumes she is merely a social drinker and, like most people, caught in the finely meshed net of already-draconian drunk-driving laws, then one can see how easily she could make that statement, and how apropos it is of the Scottish doctors’ rampage.

Indeed, Scottish doctors seem to have adopted a “demon rum” attitude that goes well beyond anything even the flawed Ms. Lightner envisioned. Possibly, like any population untutored in cause and effect relationships, they have decided that since supermarkets sell a greater percentage of alcohol than do pubs and restaurants, they can make the greatest impact for their rampage by attacking supermarkets. Not, notice, the greatest impact on problems caused by public drunkenness; the greatest impact for the doctors’ reputation among the untutored masses as protectors of the public health.

A spokesman for the Wine and Spirit Trade Association pointed out that no evidence exists to suggest that loyalty points cause problem drinking, nor is there evidence to suggest that removing them would solve the problem. The spokesman was quoted by Gerry Braiden in an article in the Scotland Herald: “Surely it’s time we had a serious debate about the root causes of alcohol misuse.”

Only one doctor in the British Medical Association in Scotland spoke out against the rampage against loyalty points, and she ratified the Wine and Spirit Trade position.  Dr. Ellie O’Sullivan sensibly claimed the issue of “excessive drinking in Britain was cultural and that the motion [to disallow loyalty points] would not solve the problem.” To illustrate the ridiculous nature of the doctors’ rampage, she asked, regarding a move to ban drunkenness on public transport, “Are we going to breathalyse everyone getting on a bus?”

Unfortunately, because the doctors have claimed an expertise they lack and a vantage point they do not deserve by virtue of their appalling lack of understanding of cultural values, the answer might be yes. Twelve years ago, it would have been unthinkable to make all air travellers remove their shoes for inspection, empty their pockets, remove their jewellery, buy specially miniaturized bottles of shampoo and subject themselves to apparently random wandings and even pat-downs to go from one country to another.

And yet, it has happened.

It happens when people fail to understand cause and effect relationships and unethically transfer their efforts from finding solutions to the causative events and factors, and apply those efforts instead to altering the effects, regardless of how ineffective such an action might be. One can bring down a high fever by tossing a patient into a bathtubful of cold water, but the patient might die unless the cause of the disease is located and treated. Indeed, the patient might die more quickly because fever is one way the body fights an infection; without the heat, conceivably the disease organisms would be much happier and grow much faster.

Likewise, removing a scintilla of alcohol from shopping carts would seem to be no more than an ice-water bath, and one applied not only to those suffering a disease, but to the disease-free as well. That, alone, makes their “cure” for alcohol abuse unethical. But it is more unethical than that; it simply adds a bit more financial suffering to those who are already suffering alcoholism and does absolutely nothing to address the underlying cause. Nothing at all.

In a purely practical sense, one wonders how long the doctors would retain any patients if they gave all of us expensive prescriptions for streptomycin when only one-half of one percent of us actually had a strep throat?