Side Note- What We Value (venting)

I just finished reading the second book for my 52 week challenge, (I have to read 52 books in 52 weeks- it's on the to-do list).

I Read The Healing of America by T. Reid

And it made me furious.

I'm not well informed about health care in the U.S. - all I know is that when I broke my arm 2 years ago I had to pay a stunning $4,000 out of pocket for a fractured elbow. However, my little complaint is absolutely nothing compared to the story in this book. The book opens with a story about Nikki White, an American citizen who contracted Lupus and because she didn't have medical insurance she died at the age of 32. What frickin' century is this?! How in the world does a person living in a country leading the medical field die of Lupus in 2006? How did we let this happen?

Bill Hsiao, the man responsible for creating Cuba's thriving health care system, said:
"Before you set up a health care system for any county, you have to know the country's basic ethical values. The first question is: Do people in your country have a right to health care? If the people believe that medical care is a basic right, you design a system that means anyody who is sick can see a doctor. If a society considers medical care to be an economic comodity, then you set ups a system that distributes health care based on the ability to pay. And then the poor, pretty much, are left out. Your ethics, your sense of justice, determine how you distribute goods and services, including health care. So the first question has to deal with a country's ethical values."

What do we value? Profit? That's understandable. But profit over a person's life? Unbelievable. I refuse to believe that this beautiful nation puts a higher value on the dollar bill than it does on an individual's life. But all of these stories are proving me wrong. This is an absolute outrage!

The book is extremely informative. Reid visits the best countries in the world in regards to health care. He talks about the different types of models employed by the leading countries- offering the pros and cons and his personal experience with each individual health care model. (France leads the pack, with Germany coming in at a close second). Basically what Reid discovered is that other countries make access to medical treatment a right of life, it's something they value. America lags in that sense- we see medicine as a profit-machine. It's embarrassing.