2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

I have to admit, the first thing that came to mind when I started this week’s reading in Stuckler and Basu’s The Body Economic about flawed healthcare systems was the TV show “Breaking Bad”.  And I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Daily Beast journalist Tricia Romano discusses how the entire plot of the show is only effective and plausible because it is based in the realities of modern American health care systems, as is also discussed in Chapter 6 of our reading. The authors cite the “approximately 35,000 avoidable deaths due to the lack of healthcare insurance” from a 2009 study (99) and the “cost of a private healthcare insurance plan, which could be up to $ 25,000 per year for a two-person family” (100).  Romano points to the similar situation of the fact that the main character of the show, Walter White, begins illegally cooking and dealing methamphetamine in order to pay for the $90,000 cost of his cancer treatments not covered by his insurance, and adds that he was lucky to not be one of the real “55 million Americans” without any health insurance at all (Romano). On such a large scale, the health care system in America is dealing with huge amounts of money (98), manipulative insurance companies (100), public and political pushback (99), and a lot of unnecessary deaths, which begins to make the difference between navigating a scary and difficult drug underworld and trying to get insurance coverage for serious health issues look a lot smaller.

While last week’s reading juxtaposed the economic policies of Greece and Iceland, this week showed the use of similar policies of austerity in health care systems having the same effects in both the United States and the United Kingdom, suggesting that healthcare systems that operate under the rules and polices of austerity are inherently, structurally flawed and have repeatedly led to poor health even when existing in different environments. Although Stuckler and Basu tend to present facts with elements of political bias (such as their presentation and commentary on the story of “Diane” on pages 97-99) they come up with a convincing argument supported by solid data that austerity is a policy that tends to have negative and pressurizing effects on economies and health care systems.

The dramatic contrast between Icelandic and Greek responses to financial tragedy explained in this chapter really struck me. Stuckler and Basu did a good job making the public health consequences quite clear–how people’s health in Iceland was pretty stable through the recession, but people’s health in Greece got way worse and continues to be a problem. Because it’s not their point and because evidence is probably less clear-cut, though, they didn’t go into a particularly deep discussion of the effects of financial/public health crises on the social fabric of a nation. From the chapters, it seems like things are pretty solid in Iceland, while Greece’s sense of community is pretty tattered–a predictable response of people feeling continually unsupported and at-risk.

My experiences at Bluestockings support the conclusions about Greece. We’ve had a number of Greek activists and immigrants come to the store to run events on the financial crisis and resulting social crisis going on there, and from what they say, things are real bad. They, as well as many activists here, are very concerned about Golden Dawn (the neo-Nazi party referenced on the last page of the chapter) and the alarming support for it.

This last part is not specific to Greece or Iceland and I’m not really sure how to connect it, but the IMF is distressingly silly. You’d think they’d try to have some more solid reasoning to back up their recommendations–whenever they get involved in a country, the stakes are very, very high. The part about financial multipliers, and how the IMF just guessed that they average about .5 rather than that they vary significantly, struck me as particularly irresponsible. IMF, you know the saying–to assume makes an ass out of u and me.