Dealing with the Healthcare Bureaucracy

I work in the field of Adult Foster Care.  Part of my job is to help administer medication to the residents that cannot manage it themselves.  Most of the residents receive benefits from social security and Medicare or Medicaid and various wavers for metal of physical disabilities they suffer from.  They therefore have their medications paid for by the various government programs that provide them with the support they need to survive.  Sometimes the decisions made by some unaccountable administrator somewhere in the bureaucracy of it all is mind numbing in its logic (or lack thereof). 

 

Example: I work with a resident that is prescribed a particular medication three times a day at three mg dose each time.  For the first two times of the day, her insurance covers the medication in a three mg pill.  But for the final time of the day the insurance will not cover the same exact pill.  Instead, it will cover a one mg pill and a two mg pill of the same medication, thus equalling three mg.  But why would it cover the dosage in a three mg pill twice per day and then not cover the same pill for the third and final time, instead requiring the resident to take two pills of the same medication to reach the required dosage?

 

This has perplexed me for sometime now.  Perhaps someone can provide me with a reasonable answer, but frankly I do not see one forthcoming.  The level of administrative bureaucracy needed to even reach a decision like this is a sad sign of how dysfunctional our healthcare systems are in the country – the U.S. for those residing elsewhere.  The bottom line for the richest and most profitable industries certainly take priority over human beings and any rational attempt at having a system that puts their care and well-being first. 

It’s not about just them not wanting you to know. It’s profitable for you not to know.

TAYLOR: It has a lot to do the school system. But I want to go back to the earlier point that I’m making. The question is why. It’s not that they just don’t want you to know.

Right now we’re dealing with a graduation rate in a number of places under 60 percent. These are the kids that graduate from high school. We know that these kids that do not graduate are doomed to a life on the economic margins. You can predict on the basis of these graduation rates the number of people that are going to be a part of the prison-industrial complex, the number of people who are going to end up in various aspects of these prison and these misery industries.

What I am saying specifically:

it’s not about just them not wanting you to know. It’s profitable for you not to know, it’s profitable for them to have segments of a society that are not functioning, because they have figured out how to generate profits on it.

 

And the fact that they’re not teaching these higher-level intellectual skills has a lot more to do with the elite schools, because—and when I say the elite, I’m talking about the suburban schools, I’m talking about the high-performing public schools, because we’re turning out kids who have technical skills but could not analyze and understand anything, in the sense that they have no levels of critical consciousness. And my own program at the University at Buffalo, in our planning and architectural schools, we have a requirement that anybody that gets into this program has to come out of college with around a 3.45. Yet, the students I’m seeing today with these higher GPAs have less consciousness in terms of understanding the realities around them than students that I saw ten years ago.

So you have these two things occurring: kids that are completely turned off by the educational process that end up in the misery industries on the one hand, and on the other hand, kids in these schools that do not have the consciousness and the understanding to produce a very different set of policies.

Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Julian Assange

A surprise Arab drive for freedom, the West’s structural crisis and new hope coming from Latin America. That’s the modern world in the eyes of Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali, two prominent thinkers and this week’s guests on Julian Assange’s show on RT.

The Uselessness of Individual Choice in Explaining Inequality

Michael D Yates recently wrote:

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I lived for many years, there is an extraordinarily wealthy family, the Hillmans, with a net worth of several billion dollars. One of their homes, along once fashionable Fifth Avenue, is a gorgeous mansion on a magnificent piece of property. About three miles east of this residence is the Homewood section of the city, whose mean streets have been made famous by the writer, John Edgar Wideman. On North Lang Street there is a row of three connected apartments. One of the end apartments has been abandoned to the elements to the rodents and the drug users. This is gang territory, and if you are African American, you do not go there wearing the wrong colors. Poverty, deep and grinding, is rampant on this street and in this neighborhood, which has one of the nation’s highest infant mortality rates.

Consider two children, one born in the Hillman house and another born in the North Lang Street apartment. In the former, there are two rich and influential parents, and in the latter there is a single mother working nights with three small children. Let us ask some basic questions. Which mother will have the best health care, with regular visits to the doctor, medicine if needed, and a healthy diet? Which child is more likely to have a normal birth weight? Which child is more likely to get adequate nutrition and have good health care in early childhood? If the poor child does not have these things, who will return to this child the brain cells lost as a consequence? Which child is more likely to suffer the ill effects of lead poisoning? Which child is more likely to have an older sibling, just 12 years old, be responsible for him when the mother is working at night? Which will be fed cookies for supper and be entertained by an old television set? If the two children get ill in the middle of the night, which one will be more likely to make it to the emergency room in time? Which child will start school speaking standard English, wearing new clothes, and having someone at home to make sure the homework gets done? Which child will travel, and which will barely make it out of the neighborhood?

As the two children grow up, what sort of people will they meet? Which will be more likely to meet persons who will be useful to them when they are seeking admission to college or looking for a job or trying to find funding for a business venture? Which will be more likely to be hit by a stray bullet fired in a war over drug turf? Which will go to the better school? Which will have access to books, magazines, newspapers, and computers in the home? Which one will wear worn-out clothes? Which one will be embarrassed because his clothes smell? Which one will be more likely to have caring teachers who work in well-equipped and safe schools? Which one will be afraid to tell the teacher that he does not have crayons and colored paper at home? Which child will learn the grammar and syntax of the rich? Which child will join a gang? Abuse drugs? Commit a crime? Be harassed by the police because he is black? When these two children face the labor market, which one will be more productive?

To ask these questions is to answer them. And when we consider that this poor child in the United States is better off than two-thirds of the world’s population, we must conclude that most of the world’s people live in a state of deprivation so extreme that they must be considered to have almost no opportunities at all. They are almost as condemned as the person on death row in a Texas prison.

A History Of May Day

In honor of May Day I thought I would post a couple of videos about the history of the day. Although it is widely recognized around the world as an international workers’ day, in memory of the Haymarket Martyrs and the struggle for the eight hour day that took place in Chicago in 1886, its origins remain very obscure to most people from the US.

Hopefully the events taking place around the US and around the world today, in connection with the Occupy movement, the Indignados, and others, will reawaken the hidden history of May Day and bring its central tenants to the fore once again.

The Origin of May Day

Amy Goodman interviews James Green on the Haymarket Riot

Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawmn interviewed on the BBC. Can capitalism change its stripes? :: Climate & Capitalism

A brief BBC clip featuring the eminent Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn on the myth of responsible capitalism.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Video: Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawmn intervi…, posted with vodpod

Capitalism in US Runs Dry by Richard D. Wolff

Interview on the current state of the world’s financial plight, and where it’s heading next.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

‘US next Greece if debt is not dealt with’, posted with vodpod

The Challenge is to Move Beyond Protests by Leo Panitch

Interview on the need to go beyond resistance and opening political space for change. Also discussed is the nature of the current crisis of global capitalism

Vodpod videos no longer available.

The Challenge is to Move Beyond Protests by Leo…, posted with vodpod