Tuesday, February 28, 2012

U.S. Health Care: The Good News

Now, let’s compare my snarky remarks about health care in the last post with a very different perspective.  Fortunately, none of it involves politicians.

In this documentary, health care delivery is being transformed by local health care professionals coming together for the benefit of community.  Often with a clean sheet of paper, and asked how they could serve all people in their community and do so with equal qualities of service regardless of how much someone can afford to pay.  Even if people can afford to pay nothing.   In other words, health care professionals who are willing to subsume the self to actually serve society.  A noble effort.  A nobility that I believe most health care professionals would embrace were they incented to or able to.  Many interviewed in this documentary actually state that in order for this type of system to work, doctors must be of virtue and willing to subsume their self-interests for the benefit of society.  Health care professionals will still make a great wage, as they should. 

Greed may ameliorate the unstable and disconnected self or ego but selflessness is a core value of every human being’s higher power.  When we are connected to our higher power or our own divinity, we naturally seek to be selfless when given the opportunity.   The health care solutions highlighted in this documentary are a manifestation of selflessness, inclusiveness and community.   The corporate state’s attempt to divide labor, citizens and society through hate, fear, bigotry, jealously and exclusion for countless reasons is not consistent with being authentically human.  Although it is consistent with the disconnected self.   The corporate state is a Godless incarnation of the unstable self.

It’s no surprise nonprofits and cooperatives are being used as delivery mechanisms in this documentary; two dynamics we have discussed as viable options on here.   When profit is the primary intent within health care, corporations will always become the dominant force.   When service, virtue, compassion as well as profit and a living wage are the primary motivators in health care, for-profit corporations will either become nonprofits, cooperatives, take massive cuts in profits  to compete with virtuous competitors or they will collapse.   Our health care system, like every other part of our economy, is broken because corporations rigged the rules to the game by bribing politicians.    All we need to do to fix health care is empower the people in local communities and realize that our entire nation is a community.   In other words, affordable health care is a basic human right.  There is nothing wrong with profit but as a primary intent, one cannot serve both money and truth. 

This documentary is truly an inspiring look at how average people are coming together to make their small slice of the world better for everyone.  Not just for patients but for those who work within a corporate culture of service.  Of health care organizations who seek to embrace human dignity and virtue by encouraging their employees to be part of something larger than themselves.   Who wouldn’t want to work for such an inspiring culture and a force for good?  A corporation that respects all of humanity?   Isn’t this always how change begins?  It’s always small groups of people driven by a dream or a desire to change their small part of the world.  It is always localization, which by no coincidence is a theme on here; that globalization is dead and we are returning to economic localization. 

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  -- Margaret Mead

The seeds of change are germinating everywhere .  The status quo doesn’t realize how exposed their underbelly is.  Something I have noted before.  Something we will continue to discuss.  The corporate state’s perceived control is nothing more than an illusion.

posted by TimingLogic at 1:43 PM