Healthcare and Me Part 3

Part 2 continued. I have friends in the UK who are doctors, men and women who work in intensive and busy careers.  (Like many salaried positions, things get exponentially better the longer you're in the system.  And, like their counterparts in the US, UK doctors have to work such long hours for low reward at the start of their careers that many might ask if it's worth it.)  But once they've been working for a while, they tend to live in nice houses, take a couple of good holidays a year, drive nice cars.  According to the UK National Health Service’s own website, consultant doctors can earn the equivalent of between $120 000 and $285 000 depending on length of service and performance related awards.  And of course, none of that salary needs to be used for personal health care costs.

And if that salary isn’t sufficient for the doctor’s wishes, no problem.  The private health care industry in the UK is thriving too.  If you really want a routine operation done a little more quickly, in a hospital with nicer décor, I’d recommend it.  Plenty of surgeons who work for the NHS most of the time also do some evening and weekend work for private hospitals, supplementing their income by as much as $2500 per day.

This may all seem too simple – for these things are never just a matter of cash, many UK health professionals are discontent with this imperfect system, and my comments don't include the challenges of malpractice insurance (although the UK is a less litigious culture, and malpractice awards can always be capped by legislation).  Yet how is it possible that the UK is able to provide universal, free at the point of use healthcare, with a significantly lower national average salary, and lower tax rates than the US?

Is it the fact that US infrastructure is broken?  There’s certainly anecdotal evidence that government is often wasteful, and functions less efficiently than it should.  (After three visits to my local Social Security agency, I still didn’t have clear answers to questions I’d been asking since last September.)

Is it the fact that many of my fellow (US) Americans have bought the lie that a service isn’t worth anything unless you’re paying for it?  That the value of something is determined by its price?  Maybe – one of the criticisms of the UK system that I hear most frequently is the assumption that ‘free’ means ‘not very good’.  The fact that I have no tonsils, no skin cancer, my lower teeth haven’t collided with each other, and I can breathe at night are of course evidence to the contrary.  I don’t think I would have been more quickly attended to, or given a better service if I had had to go into debt to pay for my healthcare.

The foundations of the mythical value placed on privatization in the US should be creaking, given the events of the last year (now that the government is a majority owner of General Motors and the financial industry only exists because two Presidents threw ‘em a few bucks til the weekend).  But the belief that private industry always saves still seems to have the power of a religious dogma.

People will ask me how I think healthcare can be paid for in the future.  Well, as someone with a gentler voice than I might say, I don't know much about the science book; but let me hazard a guess: Isn't it just possible that there's already enough money in the system to pay for basic healthcare provision for everyone?  Money that might currently be being spent on other, less valuable things?  Call me irresponsible, but maybe the huge outlay of funding for misguided militarism in the past eight years might have been better spent?

Ultimately, with a tax rate lower than the US, a national average income significantly lower, and a healthier population, the question has to be asked: if the UK and northern Ireland can do it, why can't we take care of our fellow human beings, as well as our own families, and ourselves through the provision of basic healthcare, free at the point of need?

Why the USA is Different #1: Overheard in the Line at the Social Security Office, August 7th 2009

Security guard: "Now you all have important business to transact today.  So there are no weapons allowed inside.  No knives, guns, no pepper spray. Don't worry, you can just leave those in the car." Response: One of the guys in the line in front shook his head, and groaned the kind of groan you hear when an announcement is made that the movie theatre is sold out, or the restaurant doesn't have any shrimp; and put his gun back in his car.

The Man-Ape

Jett and I had the pleasure earlier today of interviewing the performer responsible for one of the most archetypal images in cinema: Dan Richter, the Man-Ape in Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'.  Over forty years have passed since he threw that bone in the air, but time has not dimmed Dan's willingness to talk about this magnificent film.  He even goes to the trouble of explaining what he thinks it's all about.  I have been passionate about '2001' since my Dad first encouraged me to watch it on BBC2 on a Saturday afternoon ; it was a strange and beautiful experience to talk to the man who created an indelible vision in a transcendent piece of cinema.  Have a listen - you'll enjoy it.

Budd Schulberg

I once talked to Budd Schulberg, who died yesterday, on the phone; a mutual friend put us in touch in the Fall of 2003 - I was eager to put on an event to mark the 50th anniversary of 'On the Waterfront', and, innocent/enthusiastic/grasping and annoying film fan that I was, figured I should just call up the screenwriter and see if he wanted to come to a poetry club on Bleecker Street to talk about it while we showed clips.  He was 90 years old by the time I called - and if he had felt significantly older by the time the call was over, I couldn't blame him.  Grace and conciseness don't always come easy to me.  It's even harder than usual when I'm talking to someone whose identity - although he was just an ordinary guy (and Schulberg would have been at pains to remind people of that fact) - had become mutated and mingled with my memories and experience by virtue of having written a myth that had gotten under my skin.  'I coulda been a contender' is, of course, now a cliche - but that's not Schulberg's fault: someone had to write it down first, someone had to create it.

Now, who knows what kind of man was Budd Schulberg?

We know that he wrote 'On the Waterfront'.  We know that his life span was such that he was able to collaborate with both F Scott Fitzgerald (on a film called 'Winter Carnival') and Ben Stiller (who may turn 'What Makes Sammy Run' into a movie).  We know that he established the Watts Writers Workshop in the aftermath of the civil unrest.  We know he named names after he himself had been named as a Party member.  We know that he made documentaries for the army.  We know that he's in the Boxing Hall of Fame.  And I know that, a few years ago, even though my plans for the poetry club event didn't get beyond the idea stage, on the phone, at the age of 90, he was gracious, sweet-natured, generous and patient with a northern Irish film critic who thought - presumably like many others - that he had some special magic, just because he carved a cinematic myth into stone.  Rest in Peace.

I'm going to watch 'On the Waterfront' today.  Five of its principals have died in the past few years - a fact which only makes it seem more important: Rod Steiger, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, Karl Malden, Budd Schulberg.  It may not be a subtle film; it may have come from all kinds of ambivalent or complicated motivation (a film that justifies ratting on your colleagues); its dialogue may sound more theatrical than realistic...It may be all these things: but, and I don't know how much this should count for anything, other than the fact that it's true: every time I see it, it moves the hell out of me.

'On the Waterfront' is a simple story in which Brando stands up for what he believes in by refusing to give in to the corrupt oppression of gangsters who control the New York docks.  He is caught between a rock and a hard place, because his brother is a mob flunkey.  Brando’s character Terry is broken on the wheels of circumstance, his dignity stripped by not being able to follow through on the only natural talent he believed he had – boxing – because his brother’s job depended on Terry throwing a fight.  He’s a man who wanted ‘class’, who ‘coulda been a contender’, has been let down by his own choices, by the one guy he should have been able to trust, ultimately, he feels, by the whole world.  He feels that he embodies failure, although his priest, played by Karl Malden, understands the difference between ‘success’ and ‘honour’, says that ‘Every time the mob puts the squeeze on someone that’s a crucifixion; and those who keep silent about it are as guilty as the centurion.’

When Terry agrees to testify against the people who might kill him, ‘On the Waterfront’ is dealing with the sacrifice that is often required to be of any use in this world.  When he takes the risk of honesty, to do the right thing, his peers initially only stand by and watch; at which point,  ‘On the Waterfront’ is about how easy it is to get into bed with evil.   It is a well-worn cliché, but like many clichés, it’s true: all it takes for evil to prosper is that good people do nothing; or, as one character puts it: ‘I don’t know nothing I’ve not seen nothing and I ain’t saying nothing.’

That kind of silence, of course, kills.  It makes me think about what it would mean if we really were to speak out for those who have no voices.  Human beings everywhere are capable of terrorising others.  But human beings are also capable of crossing boundaries, loving people who are different, forgiving those who have hurt them.  It takes a huge psychological leap to be able to kill another human being – or even just to deliberately hurt them.  You have to pretend that the other person is less a ‘self’ than you are.

You have to wipe the slate clean before you can break it.

Human beings become broken slates because we have made it too easy to erase any sense of unique dignity from others.  The stories we tell teach us to devalue, and dehumanise others because of who they are, or who we think they are.  It is a tragedy that religious, political, and cultural mavens (like, I suppose, churches, governments or movie studios) reinforce this myth by implying that people need to become more like us before they can be part of us.   I imagine that Budd Schulberg knew this; and that it isn't stretching a point to also guess that he knew that it was not the path he imagined for a person who really wants to be a person - to contend as a human being – someone able to welcome and accept everyone, to relate to them with confidence, and not to put people into ideological boxes.  Schulberg knew that if we devalue the humanity of others, we cannot be fully human ourselves.

Shatner Hugs the Mountain

Sorry didn't have much time to post today.  But my genial co-host on The Film Talk has delivered unto me perhaps the most inspirational music video ever produced.  And before the night is out, I want you to see it too*: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ]

*I think the way that Shatner has reinvented himself as a self-reflective wit is a stroke of genius; more than that, his ability to laugh at himself might be the most important contribution he has made to our popular culture.  I mean that as a compliment.  I once heard Eugene Peterson say something like 'One key to being human is to take life seriously without taking yourself too seriously'.  Given that the self-aggrandisement and pomposity that colonised the 25 minutes of cable news I forced myself to channel surf through at the gym tonight seems to be considered something to be prized, William Shatner may deserve our thanks.