The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.” Mahatma Ghandi said that.
His words strike the heart of a question we need to be asking, and indeed demanding: Where is humanity in our current state of healthcare? In a time that lacks compassion and empathy that is an omission that is dangerous, and depraved, because it causes people to suffer and even die.
It should be clear that humanity in healthcare is essential to the quality of life as well as survival. Every one of us has a stake in this objective, which doesn’t ask much; it simply means offering respect, dignity, and help to people who are ill and need help. Humanity calls for caring about people’s cultures, values, lifestyles and lives, things the current and administration lacks. Simply put, a humanistic approach to patient care and people’s healthcare needs underscores the civility of a country and its leaders. It’s sad that we don’t have that right now.
Instead, we face shocking and terrifying cuts to healthcare agencies, organizations, and scientific research on the threshold of new treatments and survival possibilities. We also have curtailed programs that serve the less fortunate among us, discriminate against sectors of society, and ignore the fact that morbidity and mortality among Americans is going to soar because of the ignorance and cruelty of powerful but ignorant people. (Do they really think they won’t receive a terminal diagnosis, or their kids won’t succumb to measles or other diseases, or the women they love won’t die for lack of reproductive healthcare?)
These statistics and facts speak for themselves. About half of adults in this country can’t afford health care costs, with people of color and young adults along with the uninsured are more likely succumb to treatable maladies because they can’t afford needed care. People are being forced to skip or postpone seeking healthcare because of the cost. Prescription drugs also prevent about 43 percent of adults in the U.S. from taking their medication as prescribed. Others are in deep debt because of .medical bills.
According to a New York Times article last month by Dr. Zack Cooper, a physician and professor at the Yale School of Public Health, “premiums for a family health plan can exceed $27,00 a year even as patients routinely get care denied.” This denial is related to insurers’ restrictions on care and hospital costs, Cooper said.
Interestingly, just after I read that article a physician I know shared something relevant with me. She works for a private organization that hires healthcare professionals to assess whether a diagnosis or procedure is warranted and should be paid for by insurers. She often feels that insurers should be paying at least part of a medical bill, but she and her colleagues are pressured to deny coverage. This is what she told me. “It’s a form of factory driven healthcare that is irrational and inhumane. In a way it feels like they are asking us to collaborate with Health Maintenance and Managed Care Organizations. It’s a kind of passive scam that is devoid of ethics and morality. It feels like coerced collaboration.”
In his NYT article, Dr. Cooper noted that insurance premiums have escalated exponentially since the year 2000 with hospital prices growing three times as fast as inflation and twice as fast as prescription drugs and doctor visit. He also stated that” hospital prices are so high because they have market power, which brings them more bargaining heft when they negotiate prices with insurers,” which he says are in the business of making money.
It’s blatantly obvious that healthcare has become a profit-making industry devoid of any semblance of humanity. The corporate mindset coupled with an alarming absence of morality, ethics and kindness has clearly violated the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm,” which profiteers and policymakers ignore and some providers overlook.
Luckily, there are physician writers and nurse poets, including Chekov, William Carlos Williams, Danielle Ofri, Abraham Verghese, Atul Gawande, Courtney Davis, and Judy Schaeffer, along with others whose work addresses humanity in healthcare in their work, and often focus on the doctor-patient relationship, emotional labor, and the art of medicine, bridging the gap between clinical data and patient experience. They emphasize empathy and the moral imperative of compassionate care.
Through their narratives, essays, stories and personal experience we are enlightened about the significance of humanity at the heart of healthcare. Some doctors, like Daniel Ofri, teach medical students and they require that they read and discuss some of these authors and poets. That gives us hope that when these budding physicians and healthcare administrators rise to positions of authority, they will move us to a more humane future.
But right now, we need the courage to demand that those in governance grow a conscience, a heart, and a plan for healthcare that equals those in countries with universal healthcare as a human right, not a profitmaking outfit.
As the Dalai Lama said, “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” You might want to share that quote with your legislators.
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Elayne Clift has a masters degree in Health Communication and teaches a class on Humanity at the Heart of Healthcare.