[p2p-research] Sick and Wrong : Rolling Stone

[Paul D. Fernhout]

One of the best essays I've read about the health care debate, and a small 
excerpt:
"Sick and Wrong : Rolling Stone"
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong
"The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to 
die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend 
billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses 
doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for 
delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: 
Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to 
patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the 
system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses."

Others:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/how-progressive-groupthin_b_280134.html
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/why-the-public-option-matters/
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/inside_the_great_american_bubble_machine

The funny thing is, Obama did a great job of outlining why health care 
issues in the USA were undermining innovation (and by extension, 
peer-to-peer activities outside conventional big business):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/politics/10obama.text.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
"""
Then there's the problem of rising costs. We spend one-and-a-half times more 
per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any 
healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have 
gone up three times faster than wages. It's why so many employers – 
especially small businesses – are forcing their employees to pay more for 
insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely. It's why so many 
aspiring entrepreneurs cannot afford to open a business in the first place, 
and why American businesses that compete internationally – like our 
automakers – are at a huge disadvantage. And it's why those of us with 
health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without 
it – about $1000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and 
charitable care.
"""

That's one reason it is hard to build alternatives outside the conventional 
system in the USA. And privately purchased health insurance is usually twice 
as much as what companies pay for it at already high cost, because it is a 
smaller pool and has more overhead.

Related:
"Cheap Labor Conservatives Issues Guide"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/16
"""
3. OPPOSITION TO ANY SORT OF NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
Health care costs are outrageously expensive, and threaten people with 
financial ruin. Also, health insurance is primarily provided by employers 
through “group plans”. So if you lose your job, you lose your health 
coverage. This is not quite as a big a problem, since the passage of COBRA – 
which was opposed by guess who? That’s right, the cheap-labor conservatives. 
In short, national health insurance would provide a huge measure of security 
for working Americans from potential financial catastrophe – which 
catastrophe is therefore no longer a force keeping you suitably intimidated 
by your employer.
"""

Obama just can't bring himself to (or is not allowed to) propose serious 
changes to a system that is seriously broken.

Also, why not spend more more on R&D for more health innovations (even 
hundreds of billions of US dollars a year)? This was mentioned in the 
comments earlier here on Cuba as its medicine and health care systems 
improved after the US embargo as it turned to locally grown medicinal plants:
   "Cuba Promotes "Green" Medicine"
   http://www.farmradio.org/english/radio-scripts/53-5script_en.asp
"Cuban doctors are discovering that herbal medicines work just as well as 
modern drugs for some infections, parasites and some other illnesses. 
Sometimes they work better!"

And from India:
   "Combating biopiracy - the legal way "
   http://www.indiatogether.org/2005/may/env-biopiracy.htm
"Can something be 'novel' if it is already well known? Patent offices in 
some countries require only that the patented bits be novel in their own 
country, and completely ignored the knowledge of other nations. Countries 
like India that are rich in biodiversity and traditional knowledge are 
seeking to end this biopiracy. ... Thus, in a nutshell 'Biopiracy' refers to 
the ways that corporations - almost all from the developed world - claim 
ownership of, free ride on, or otherwise take unfair advantage of, the 
genetic resources and TK and technologies of developing countries. 
Biopirates are those responsible for one or both of the following acts: (i) 
the theft, misappropriation of, or unfair free-riding on, genetic resources 
and/or TK through the patent system; and (ii) the unauthorised and 
uncompensated collection for commercial ends of genetic resources and/or TK."

Or why not invest hundreds of billions of dollars on systems that really do 
let Google become a health care provider as a diagnostic and prescribing 
tool? So, this joke becomes real, but with safeguards:
   http://www.ginside.com/content/2007/03/dilbert-google-heatlh-plan.jpg
I read about a peer-operated diagnostic system like that in the sci-fi novel 
"Triton" from 1976:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_%28novel%29
Just think how a system like Google could leverage the results of billions 
of people putting in their medical information about what works and what did 
not -- if the system was structured well and had some minimal oversight.

So, here we see politics and vested interests at odds with a more 
peer-to-peer future. And a future that promises to be a lot cheaper *and* 
healthier than what we have now. And there are literally trillions of 
dollars spent on the wrong overall approach every year which could fund 
alternatives instead. So, the good news is, the potential upside is huge 
once cultural change towards a larger peer-to-peer commons in health care 
begins to happen.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/