If free market health care is what you want, then you better tip well!

The term, "socialized medicine", has begun to hold a stigma. Socialized. Like Socialism. We Americans don't like that! Many have argued that the American health care system is doing just fine the way it is. Socialized medicine would be the downfall of us all. Although Obama’s health care proposal is not stringently socialized medicine by definition, critics are slapping this label on it.

Let's take a closer look at how health care in the United States is actually structured. Neoliberal philosophy and principles of capitalism have found its way into medicine. So much so, that textbooks are being re-written to change the word, "patient" to the word, "client." Health care professionals sit in on in-services that instruct us to treat patients like consumers/customers. The customer is always right, right?

If you want a free market health care system that runs on principles of neoliberal capitalism, let's not half ass this thing! Let's go all the way! I am proposing a new health care system that is wholly in tune with spirit of capitalism and free market principles.

As it is now, some people can't afford health insurance. Too bad for them. They must have not worked hard enough in life to be able to afford this luxury. Remember: it's a luxury, not a right.

Just like in other industries, money gets you the best products. Why drive a KIA if you can afford a Mercedes that is suped up with all the latest technological safety devices, right? In our health care system, I propose a similar primary principle: the more money you have, the better health care you can get.

We will divide hospitals into tiers with the best hospitals costing the most. There will be the five star hospitals with the best health care practitioners doling out the best and innovative health care, just like how the hospitality and food and beverage industries are structured.

The rest of us lazy people who did not get our lives together to be wealthy enough to deserve such superb care will go to the other hospitals, the affordable and decent service hospitals, the Applebee's of hospitals, if you will. The dregs of society who are poor will go to the McDonald's of hospitals, getting mediocre health care from health care practitioners that are not getting paid enough to care.

I'm a nurse. So, I want to get a piece of the big business hospital action. I propose instituting a gratuity policy in health care. If you want good health care service, you better tip well. Because if you don't, when you go into cardiac arrest, I might not run on over to your bedside with the crash cart as fast as I can. I might be too busy catering to my other patient that was smart enough to leave me a hefty tip. Tip your nurses well, folks!

As it is, we are already marching toward this kind of health care system built on the principles of neoliberal philosophy. We should just be honest about it. The relationship between health care practitioners and patients has been reduced to a relationship based on financial exchanges. Health care professionals have invaluable services or products and patients have a demand for these goods. There will be no humanity in health care. There is no room for that when there is money to be made.

In my proposed health care system, hospital and medical groups will treat patients like how corporations treat consumers by spending large sums of money hiring consulting and advertising firms to figure out how to get and keep their clients. Actual medicine will take a backseat because it will not be about how well you treat your patients, but how well they think you are treating them.

We will treat our patients with the primary focus on how much money we can make off of them by ordering labs, tests or various other diagnostics, or performing interventions they may or may not really need. (Wait. We may already be doing that. Score!) But who cares? We want to bill them and their insurance companies as much as we can!

Socialized medicine? Who wants that? Health care for all? Are you crazy? Look at all the millions we could be making off of people's illnesses, their suffering, and their pain? Patients are vulnerable. They are lay health people. We can tell them anything and because they are fearful of death and disease, we can make a killing!

We want your money even after you're dead. If you die... Oh, well. At least, we can still bill for it. Even when you are dead and cold, we will still be able to spend your money. And that's what matters the most.

Corporatization of Health Care: A Quiet Linguistic Strategy

As an anti-capitalist, I am rightly sickened by Western medicine’s move from the terminology of “patient” centered care to “client” centered care. The concepts are both the same; care individually tailored to the patient/client’s needs. However, this is where semantics hold much weight. The change in terminology brings an array of ideals and connotations, and a support of the hegemonic power structure of capitalism, where the use of the word “client” reduces human beings to a means of gaining profit.

A client is a customer; someone who pays for goods or services. A patient is person who requires medical care. Persons, who require medical care, need medical care to prevent morbidity and mortality, regardless of their financial ability. A client can pay for the “goods or services” (health care), regardless if they actually need it to prevent morbidity and mortality. The use of “client” slyly inserts the importance of the monetary exchange between the health care seeker and the health care giver. “Patient” is a much too nebulous term to continue to use in Western medicine’s movement towards full corporatization of Western health care.

This movement is taking place quietly, creeping into our future health care professionals’ classrooms, in the hospitals we treat people, and most unfortunately, in the way some of us view health care as a privilege and not a right. It is through insipid inconspicuous tactics, like changing terminology, we are unwittingly influenced. Health care textbooks have been updated with newer editions that have been careful to use “client” instead of the outdated “patient”. As health care professionals, we begin to call the health care seekers our “clients”. We internalize that health care is only for those that can pay. The vows we took to do no harm and to help others have been discreetly replaced with the values of money and fiscal integrity. Before we know it, we believe that health care is a privilege for only those that can pay. We begin to attach human worth to economic value. In the end, it is those that cannot pay that need our help most of all.

This subtle linguistic change is a way to transform our thinking. We must be cognizant of the influence capitalism has on our health, our way of life, and our way of thinking. Remember: just because an idea is the most predominant and popular does not mean this idea is just. Human worth should never be reduced to monetary value. Commodity fetishism in the relations between the sick and the healers is offensive. Ultimately, the sick are objectified. The actual humanness of the patient in question are replaced with diagnoses, ICD-9 codes, and health insurance policies. The relations between human beings are transformed into economic exchanges.

This is not a world we want to live in.

Disconnect between humans, reduction of human beings into profit generators, and the demise of health care professionals into soulless money making profiteers are what we should fight against. We cannot let corporatization control how we practice medicine and how we care about our patients.