Health. Care.

Darlings. Pretty Lady has a serious request to make of you.

She knows, in general, that all of you dears turn to her at the end of a weary day, for a little Light Relief. She endeavors not to tackle Serious Issues; in particular, she is highly allergic to issues that require, or seem to require, political solutions. Pretty Lady prefers to avoid politics. She is morally opposed to politics as a blanket rule, in fact--but that is a different story.

However, Pretty Lady is obliged to confess to you that she does, indeed, have her moments of Serious Thinking. She is sorry to shock you, but it's true. One of her pet hobbies is busying her pretty little brain upon the problem of Healthcare. That is, the Care of one's Health, and the concomitant systems that have arisen, and might arise, thereof.

And she is devastated to inform you that, bluntly, the 'Healthcare' system we are now laboring under, in her current home country of the U.S. of A., is not. Is not and does not. Period.

You see, what we have, currently, is a system based upon the concept of 'health insurance.' This, at face value, is a bunch of baloney. How in the world does one 'insure' health? Given that the biological facts of the situation are overwhelmingly, that is one hundred percent, stacked against us?

Because we are all, every one of us, one hundred percent mortal. Pretty Lady is sorry if she is the first to break this to you.

Thus, 'health insurance' companies are promising the impossible. For this imaginary service of protecting you against the utterly inevitable, they quite properly charge a hefty fee. Moreover, as soon as one show signs of incipient mortality, the 'health insurance' company, for reasons of excellent business, refuses to insure you any longer. 'Health insurance' companies, then, exist for the sole purposes of taking your money and giving nothing in return.

What, then, is going on in the minds of those hapless persons who are actually paying them?

The fond delusion nurtured by the 'insured,' in fact, is that they are paying for the privilege of receiving astronomically expensive 'health care' upon such occasion as they, most unfortunately, might happen to need it. In essence, they are betting that their health will require care to the tune of more money than they originally invest in the 'insurance.' In other words, they are expecting to get something for nothing.

First law of economics, physics, karma, and simple existence: You cannot get something for nothing.

Ya.

This impossible situation is further confused, conflated, and screwed up by the fact that there are all sorts of attendant industries, bureaucracies, research institutes, professionals, and overtly fraudulent set-ups geared to extract the maximum Something for the minimum Nothing that they can possibly leverage from the screwed-up system. Nobody acts to Bring Down the system, of course, because so many people's very livelihoods depend upon it.

Not the livelihoods of the 'insured,' however; these are the ones which are maximally expendable. Because once the system has bled them financially dry, obviously there is no more use for them.

Ergo this engenders, daily, hourly, nightmare stories like that of Pretty Lady's beloved friend, k.

I hardly ever get the fever and chills any more. But I'm still sleeping around 18 hours a day, partly from allergies. The pain in the foot is still intense. The shin bone is tender, and the ankle too. But the foot itself, internally scarred from the abscess in 2004, is by far the most affected by pain.

If I walk just a few steps, the pain ramps up, and lasts for hours or days.

And I still don't have a working scooter, even for home use. All I can do is sit around with my feet elevated, letting the things I need done go undone, letting my life slowly fall apart around me.

Yesterday, for the very first time, a certain realization hit me full force: If I'd had a working scooter - instead of the defective one delivered in July and never replaced - the infection would probably not have happened. The incompetence of the equipment company and the HMO is the primary cause of this terrible new infection, more permanent damage and permanently increased pain, and almost the loss of my leg.

After the infection, with a working transportable scooter, I wouldn't have been stuck here for a month, unable to go anywhere or do anything. I would not have fainted at the pain doctor's office from the strain of walking 150 feet. I would not have felt the intense pain I do every time I walk from my office chair to the kitchen or bathroom or front door.

My written complaint to the Medicare HMO about the scooter issue was finally addressed, over a week after submission. The person calling me from the complaint department had no idea I was complaining about the durable medical equipment company as well, including allegations of fraud. Even though this was included in the complaint she was supposedly reading, right in front of her.

Although it is a deeply painful experience, more so for those who have known this lovely lady well enough and long enough to feel an abiding interest in her wellbeing, Pretty Lady nevertheless recommends that you go and read a great deal more of what k has to say about health, her HMO, Medicare, and all the rest of it. It is like a thriller and a horror movie and Kafka all rolled into one. You will never be bored.

You will then, as perhaps never before, be convinced that 'health insurance' as it is practiced in the great state of Florida, at the very least, has nothing at all to do with Health Care.

Now, there are two separate issues before Pretty Lady, as the situation now stands. One is the Personal. Pretty Lady happens to Care, Personally, a very great deal for her friend k. This is key. Because Pretty Lady Cares, Personally, for this limpid and inspiring soul, and wishes for her to remain on this planet for as long as possible, spreading her limpid influence, Pretty Lady is urging everyone who Cares for Pretty Lady to go over and offer her friend some support. If you happen to have excess financial resources, there is a convenient 'Donate' button for you to press. If, like Pretty Lady, your resources are constrained, Moral Support will do just fine. K, being rare and radiant, absorbs a great deal of healing from such things.

On the other hand--the hand of International Affairs, the hand of Politics and all Things Grand--what do you think Pretty Lady is going to say? Is she going to call, righteously, for universal Socialized Medicine? For a Compassionate Culture? For the People to forcefully rob the coffers of the rich, and scatter infinite health and wellbeing round the planet, so that everyone lives happily ever after?

The fact is, Pretty Lady doesn't know. She might, eventually. If that's the most judicious option.

But before she makes any such sweeping propositions, she feels compelled to point out a few things.

1) Health is most efficiently nurtured by those who Care most about it. The person to whom one's health matters most is, usually, oneself. Thus, one's Health is, first and foremost, best Cared for by the sussing out, assessing, allocating, and applying of all resources, financial and otherwise, FOR ONESELF. Not by a faceless institution that exists merely to rip one off and usher one silently and efficiently into the grave.

2) Health Care may include, but is not limited to, access to strange, myriad, wondrous, mysterious, and above all, expensive Drugs. In fact, in Pretty Lady's experience, the better one Cares for one's Health, the fewer of these dicey Drugs one is likely to need.

SO, framing "Healthcare" as a system primarily to support the existence of myriad drug companies may greatly assist the drug companies, but it is not necessarily synonymous with Health. And indeed, may be counterproductive to it.

3) Hoary but useful Cliché of the Day: An ounce of Prevention is worth a pound of Cure.

That is, unless one is SELLING the CURE.

Pretty Lady suspects that one very large reason that the "Healthcare System" is so stingy on Prevention is that it is so heavily interested in selling cures. That, and in covering its own butt; there is a reason that doctors these days compulsively order masses of expensive and, in most cases, useless diagnostic tests. They are not nearly so concerned about your financial well-being as their own, and medical malpractice lawsuits cost them money.

All of these truths may seem to be self-evident. The problem is, our current 'healthcare' system rarely seems to acknowledge them, in practice if not in word. Until these obvious truths are taken into account, all efforts at amending a 'healthcare' system are bound to be in vain. They will bankrupt even the rich, before putting a dent in the sufferings of the poor.

Because, darlings, the current 'health insurance' system is simply a spiralling financial sink, spreading misery and ruin among those it purportedly exists to help. One is, like Pretty Lady, almost better off without it. Until one is mowed down by cancer or a bus; then, it seems, it is those who Care who are dragged deep into the vortex, with no escape.

UPDATE: From Desert Cat:

Now the good news! I do believe I have convinced our girl to go out immediately and purchase for herself a scooter that will serve her present needs, while waiting for the insurance issue to be settled in whatever manner it eventually will. I promised her that I had a herd of horses I was holding in reserve to assist her financially with this very necessary step.

She is a bit overwhelmed at the thought, but grateful nonetheless.

Therefore, as the simplest and most straightforward way to make this happen, won't you please trek on over to her website and hit that "Make A Donation" button located on her left sidebar? This way she will be able to purchase the specific scooter that best meets her needs, rather than any of us trying to figure out which one would work best for her.

Her Walter is coming home Monday afternoon (choirs of angels sing!), and I think it would be absolutely fabulous if she had enough cash in her account to go out with him then and purchase the scooter she so badly needs.

Thank you all for your generosity, whatever amount you are able to contribute. And if you are broke, believe me, the moral support you offer her is also very much appreciated, maybe more than you know.


Thwack the button! Thwack the button!