Cognitive dissonance

I was planning to write another blog about being here in Swansea and getting settled focusing on the walk around Swansea with Nigel Jenkins on Tuesday (which was great—and I will do) … but –
I think instead I will be very bloggerly and write about the first thing I’ve noticed that reveals a very large gap between British & American thinking: Healthcare.
Front page of the Guardian today was an article about how it’s been discovered that millions upon millions have been spent to combat Obama’s healthcare plan. Noted was that there are 6 health industry lobbyist for every member of congress ….
Healthcare has already come up several times in talking to people here. Intellectually they seem to understand that in America there is no public healthcare. But when I mentioned, “No, I haven’t had insurance for 5 years ago now… so I just haven’t been to the doctor.” The reaction is a blinking moment of silence. And when I told them about a friend’s son, age 21, who died of appendicitis in Los Angeles 8 years ago after being refused entry into two hospitals, they actually gape. The words don’t quite register. We mentioned how the famous poet, Ted Berrigan, died for want of healthcare, years ago in New York. One person I talked to said that when he was visiting friends in the states years ago one of his friends had gotten very sick, but rather than take him into the hospital, they had mopped his brow through the night, hoping for the best because they were uninsured. As he told the story of something that had happened so long ago, he still seemed perplexed by it. The response is: Shameful; Appalling; Horrific. The look on faces is one of total incomprehension of how a country so rich could fail to provide basic medical care for all its citizens. They don’t understand how insurance companies could have become such a huge part of the medical process. (Don’t think I do, either, really.)
I think their inability to fully grasp our system (or lack thereof) is mirrored by our own inability to really grasp the system here. We registered at the clinic. Appointments? No charge. Tests? No charge. And here in Wales--prescriptions? No charge. We received our NHS cards and on the back was text about, “make sure to present this if you are going to a doctor who is not your registered service provider… blah blah, or you might be charged.” And I thought, “AH HA!” But no, then you look down and read that you can get a refund of your money; it just means a lot of paperwork …
There is a lot to say about healthcare, insurance companies, Obama’s plan and the rest—I’ll leave that for another forum. Mostly I am trying to express, and maybe even trying to understand, to really feel, what it is like to be in a place where the idea of someone dying of something curable for the sole reason that they are poor has been written out of the lexicon. In the U.S. we hear anecdotes of insurance companies denying treatment, we see news stories, or know friends who have lost loved ones. Some of us are uninsured. But I think maybe eventually, even the horror we feel becomes habit. And the numbing, the repetition, eat away at our humanity and our outrage…
It is interesting to know there are places in the world where people can’t comprehend the US healthcare system.