\u201cWhen even doctors can\u2019t find doctors, something needs to change,<\/a>\u201d I read in our Sunday, May 3 paper. Indeed! Corporate capitalism is at the root of what, in the U.S., passes for \u201chealthcare,\u201d or lack thereof.<\/p>\nBut health, illness and knowledge are not commodities on which to legitimately profit. Therefore, I consider for-profit \u201chealthcare\u201d an oxymoron. So, couldn\u2019t we change from such centralized corporate control to decentralized, nonprofit caregiver control?<\/p>\n
As a teenager in 1950s postwar Europe, my family and I were beneficiaries of just such a universal healthcare system.<\/p>\n
Our whole country was divided into circuits, to each of which a resident \u201ccircuit doctor\u201d was assigned. He had at his disposal home visiting nurses and other assistants, as well as other doctors to consult as needed. He was paid a decent salary plus expenses and provided an office and subsidized family housing in the community.<\/p>\n
His job was to keep visiting his circuit, to (1) counsel everyone in healthy ways of living, (2) diagnose illnesses, (3) distribute or prescribe (no cost) medicines as required, (4) treat and help heal sick people in their homes, and (5) arrange for pubic, nonprofit hospital or sanatorium care (including transportation), if needed. <\/p>\n
Our family\u2019s beloved circuit doctor, Dr. Zimmerman, came by to see us once or twice every week, more often if needed.<\/p>\n
Our healthcare was free from a public nonprofit system. It was also economical. For instance, with people\u2019s existing homes doubling as (free) healthcare facilities, the cost of most hospital\/ nursing home rooms was eliminated. So was the need for their maintenance, support personnel and any corporate markup on it all.<\/p>\n
Even very ill people were routinely cared for at home by our circuit doctors. Clarisse, my maternal grandmother, for instance, a (back then sadly incurable) cancer patient, was treated at home until she died. Dr. Zimmerman even taught my mother how to administer morphine shots for her pain. Circuit doctors routinely taught people to appropriately home care.<\/p>\n
Of course, such a free public healthcare system was made possible in part by universal access to housing and tuition-free education. We had no homeless people, and our doctors received their education and diplomas without becoming indebted. They needed decent but not disproportionately large salaries.<\/p>\n
In such a nonprofit system, illness is not treated as a loss \u2014 but as part of life. So, insurance companies have no legitimate role \u2014 certainly not in selecting medical procedures. To me it seems absurd to subordinate a whole \u201chealth\u201d system to \u201chealth insurance\u201d companies. That is not healthcare, but protection from the Great American Itch to sue \u2014 in which case jurists make decisions, not doctors, so the decisions are no longer \u201cmedical.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I rethink the U.S. health insurance system in which we are stuck, I remember our loving home-based healthcare and Dr. Zimmerman\u2019s guidance. We had no purchased for-profit corporate services and facilities. Our actual healthcare need was then, as is now, public support for the loving care we already provide at home. <\/p>\n
And \u2014 imagine! \u2014 under the guidance of a \u201ccircuit doctor\u201d we don\u2019t need to search for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Kando lives in Damariscotta. \u201cWhen even doctors can\u2019t find doctors, something needs to change,\u201d I read in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-650391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}