It’s often argued that nothing needs to be fixed with the American health care system, because it is the best in the world. The argument I lay alongside that is that the best tasting menu — at least according to Anthony Bourdain, a man with whom I wouldn’t recommend you trifle is at French Laundry in Yountville, Calif.
And yes, there are definitely things I wouldn’t “fix” about either. But no one needs French Laundry in order to live, although if millions of Americans suddenly developed the emergent need to have Thomas Keller’s black trumpet mushroom pain perdu in order to stay alive, it would become rational to advocate that normal human Americans receive easy and affordable access to it.
Of course, the truth is that the American health care system is not as good as all that. Here’s Sarah Kliff, riffing on a chart from a recent Journal of the American Medical Association study titled, “The Anatomy of American Health Care”:
Nevertheless, the way some of us experience the American health care system can leave us with the impression that it is, truly, great. I sure felt that way not long ago, when I ended up having to spend the night at my local hospital when a nasty bacterial infection in my respiratory system aggravated a so-called “pre-existing condition.” The care I received was first rate, the room private and clean, the service swift, and at times, it really felt like there was a team of people at my beck and call. It wasn’t the sort of health care that our beloved American oligarchs get, to be sure. But it still seemed like I was Lord Grantham up in that piece, and more to the point, it felt like a bargain for someone like me.
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And that, right there, is where the “best health care in the world” illusion comes into play. Privilege determines so much about your health care outcomes, and not just the precise amount of access and the exact level of health care quality. And when you consider the sort of people who sit on TV and nod along with a person insisting that American health care is the greatest in the world without even a crack in their credulous mask, you can see how this myth has become an accepted truth. If privilege tells the story of American health care, that’s the way it’s going to be depicted.
So let’s take a look at some timely, alternative stories. Adrianna McIntyre cites a recent study in Health Affairs that gives a snapshot of how just being poor, in and of itself, can drive the need for medical care. The study’s authors took a look at “temporal trends in the incidence of” the low blood-sugar levels traditionally associated with conditions like diabetes, and found that low-income individuals — people for whom things like SNAP and Social Security are major factors in their overall resources, from month to month — can enter health danger zones just because of what day of the month it is. Per the study’s abstract:
Date: Jan 13, 2013