People's health care workers
In 1984 China when I took the top photo, the decades-old system of barefoot doctors was winding down. Then, “[w]ithout the public-service oriented work of barefoot doctors ... health-care crises of peasants substantially increased." The Lancet wrote. These "barefoot" healthcare workers had concentrated on primary healthcare and prevention rather than treatment. Publicly funded and free to patients, the system significantly raised health standards throughout the country.
We Americans should be so lucky. Or if Bernie Sanders had his way, good healthcare would not be a matter of luck; it would be a basic human right, not a for-profit commodity.
Bernie has also long fought for dental and vision care to be included in currently existing Medicare and Medicaid.
Which brings me to what sparked this tribute to people’s healthcare workers—barefoot and bare-headed. I visited my "friendly family dentist" yesterday for some basic maintenance. At the check-out desk, I was presented with a bill for $1,400 and informed that the dental practice was no longer in my insurance network. Oh, and a $1,800 crown beckoned.
I'll survive the financial hit, but an estimated 112 million (44%) American adults struggle mightily—often sacrificing food and decent housing—to pay for healthcare. They are ignominiously joined by 20 million underserved children. And even people with "good" insurance are not protected from catastrophic costs. Many delay care or go untreated and end up sicker or dead.
OMG, Terry, what an awful bill. And for "regular" maintenance. It really is survival of the fittest out there in the our world now. Luckily, I grew up with good "teeth" genes from my dad and highly mineralized water in rural New Mexico. The other really broken part is our health workers. There are not enough of them, they are over-supervised these days (so much paper work that they can't set up private practice and so are "piece workers" like the weavers of old, having to adhere to "the rules" of no more that 15 minutes with patients, etc. Not to mention having to look at computers instead of making eye contact. Those computer systems are mostly set up for billing convenience, not for doctors' ease of use. I could go on and on. Broken systems everywhere...does it remind you of the third-world countries you've traveled in? I remember the 40 Families of El Salvador, where the income inequality was about what it is here now in the US. Sigh, sigh, sigh...
Our Bernie is a jewel! Wish we had barefoot doctors,but would need snowboots around here!