It's no secret that healthcare is an expensive issue in America. Who is to blame?
Healthcare in America is a widely talked about issue. The expense and its availability tend to be the points most often hit on. In Michael Moore’s documentary, Sicko, he focuses his narrative not on the people who aren’t able to get receive healthcare, but on those who have it and the struggles they face while using it. Throughout this film, I found a lot of the healthcare system, if not all of it, is built on a social structure that Americans have built for the wealthy. It requires very little sociological imagination to draw connections between the healthcare system and a biased society.
In the USA, in more ways than one, we have set up a system that only allows the wealthy to continue to prosper. Michael Moore alludes to this throughout his film, as the average healthcare plan for the average person is not at an average price tag. People often go into debt to receive the basic amount of health services. If you don’t have any money, then you can forget about healthcare all together. We impose a structure on the world by thinking of it in a certain way, by having one set of beliefs about it rather than another. (Paul A. Boghossian; What is social Construction? P.1) So if we set up these standards of rules, wouldn’t we want all humans to have an equal chance of life and health? You would think this to be the case, however with a society built around class, those who make the rules tend to benefit from said rules. Karl Marx alludes to this in many of his sociological theories, most commonly known being his communist manifesto.
While class and financial advantages are not a new concept, America’s focus on greed over humanity starkly contrasts with the rest of the western world. In Sicko, Moore takes a group of people who struggle with America’s healthcare to Cuba, where healthcare is affordable and abundant. In Cuba, not only are the doctor visits free, but the medication is about one-tenth of the price of America’s pharmaceutical medication. While it seems that Cuba is a society that puts it’s people first, America runs on the idea of adding a financial burden to the idea of a long and healthy life. The experience of society as subjective reality is achieved through primary, and to a lesser extent, secondary socialization. The former involves being given an identity and a place in society. (Tom Andrews; What is social Constructionism? P.4) This, again, references class in American society and what place you have been given within it. While this is a strong belief in America, other countries seem to think healthcare is where the idea of class should dissolve.
Pharmaceuticals in our country are perhaps the most comparable to sociological imagination. We sell drugs the way we sell shoes. Billboards with images of multi-vitamins, television commercials of people gallivanting through the park because of antidepressants, and doctors addressing the symptoms rather than the problems. The public is sold on the idea that you need it to be happy and healthy. The money America makes on pharmaceuticals alone could solve the hunger crisis in East Africa. Both prescribed and over the counter medicine being marked up to anything as high as 5,000 percent. (Julie Beck; The Atlantic, P.1) Where in Moore’s documentary, he shows Cuban medication being as little as seven cents. Along with the lower prices on medication, the doctors were less likely to prescribe as many pills as an American doctor. One woman went from being prescribed nine different medications in American to three medications in Cuba. So the thought enters my mind, who are doctors in service for? The people or the pharmaceutical companies? Let’s just say seven cent medicine won’t pay their student loans.
This documentary showed a hard truth about a group often overlooked. We spend so much time focusing on those who aren’t covered by any medicare, while not taking into consideration you may be in just as bad of a position with it. The social construct of a society is very apparent in day to day life in the way we dress, talk, and act. Now, my eyes have been opened as to how that concept has creeped into the field of medicine. Constructing a “money hungry” America that sells the idea of happiness and wellness, only to deliver financial burdens and a life of fear for the health of yourself and loved ones, is not an American dream we strive for daily.
Comments