What Paris taught me about American health care

Earlier this month my family traveled to Paris together. It was the first time I had been there in thirteen years. So last time I was a newlywed, and this time I saw the city through the eyes of a Mom of a ten-year old. I am sharing this not as a travelogue, but because the experience of spending time in a country that has universal health care really struck me at this moment as we, here in the United States, are debating the future of our current flawed health care system.

Today as the Senate is taking action on their bill, I want to tell you what I learned on my recent trip, but first I want to mention that today I heard a fantastic interview on The Story With Dick Gordon [listen through their website or by iTunes podcast] about a French woman who lived in America for many years, and became an American citizen. She was married to a doctor and and worked as an administrator in his medical practice, but even so they could not afford health insurance for themselves or their employees. So when she became seriously ill, she ended up returning to France for hospitalization and stabilization. Then she came back to America, and was able to get insurance and continued her treatment here. She sees the good in the American system but also the gaping holes in coverage that can leave people untreated, which she says just would not happen in France.


On our recent trip to Paris, I was immediately struck by how family-friendly the city seemed. Our first full day there we happened upon a massive Family Sport Fun Fair, designed to promote healthy living. It was a huge festival taking place in the field next to the Eiffel Tower. The FREE festival featured dozens of activities, from a little Circus School, to boxing lessons from the police, to Aikido demonstrations, a rock climbing wall, badminton courts, wheelchair sports for all to try, and a cool obstacle course. There was even a scuba-diving tank trucked in, which you had to see to believe.



We passed on the scuba diving lessons but did just about everything else we could fit in. I was really proud of Mojo Girl as she scaled the rock-climbing wall and careened down on the huge zip line attached to the top. Here she was in a brand-new city, and she doesn't speak French, so it took all the courage she had to try out these adventurous activities. (At the rock climbing wall we waited in line for an hour and saw about 50 kids do it ahead of us, so we helped translate the instructions for her as we all observed.)

Being in Paris and doing family activities for a whole week I really felt that there is a French esprit de corps that we are lacking here, at least in American suburbia. I don't know if I am capturing the exact term the French would use, and if anyone can direct me to a more accurate term I am all ears. But I felt like the Parisians are really used to being together, in public. Instead of being in a car, for the whole week we walked, or took the Metro subway or bus. The city is crowded and we were surrounded by lots of other people the whole time. But with the exception of one jam-packed subway ride with suitcases, it wasn't uncomfortable. People didn't feel like "strangers," they felt like people. They were generally not overtly friendly but they were not intimidating either, and any time we needed assistance we were able to find it.

So when it came to Parisian kids, I got the sense that they are used to crowds. Take a look at the playground on a Wednesday afternoon when there was no school:


That is public spirit!

We spent a lot of time on the playground (roughly one park visit for every musuem or church visit) and it really and truly struck me to the the core of my heart as I looked at the diverse, playful crowd: every one of these kids has health care. And it felt different. It didn't feel like us versus them, my group versus your group, rich versus poor. It was just KIDS at the park and they all had health care.

American kids deserve no less and we need to keep pushing our leaders as they take tentative steps in the direction of providing options that will make health care for all a possibility.

How to get there is still a matter of great debate and one piece of good news is that there is more than one way to do it! I recommend the Fresh Air interview with author T. R. Reid talking about different health care strategies around the globe, also detailed in his book The Healing of America, and the Frontline special Sick Around the World.

We HAVE to figure out a better way to provide health care in the United States and ensure that everybody has basic coverage. I am afraid that our great American Individualism has become our great flaw: we assume that what we have do it here is the BEST when it's not necessarily so. When it comes to health care and related social/family issues like maternity leave, we can no longer afford to stick out like a sore thumb as the big, rich industrialized nation that has failed to provide the basic protection that we need.

Do you have experience with health care around the world that allows you to see the American system in a different light? Please tell us about it in the comment section.

Why are we surprised that politicians cheat? And why we should care.

Cheating bothers me, a lot. But beyond the actual marital infidelity we've seen from politicians such as John Edwards, John Ensign, and Mark Sanford, what really bothers me is lying, hypocrisy, hubris, narcissism, privilege, and paternalism. In short, the idea that the rules that apply to the rest of us don't apply to them. This raises the "private" behavior of these elected public leaders (current, former, and aspirational) to the level of something that we should all care about. After all, these men are making the laws that govern our lives.

I believe that the behavior of these individual men reflects a larger belief system that underlies powerful political philosophies, namely the conservative movement. The neo-conservatives of the 1950's and beyond, including Bush-era leaders such as Paul Wolfowitz, followed the ideas of Leo Strauss, "a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses." Many of these leaders who profess a strong belief in conventional morality and religion actually believe it's an important way to control the masses, but once again, the rules do not apply to them, the elites. (And yes, among Democrats, we don't always do better. I am still mad at Bill Clinton for behaving like an undisciplined, privileged idiot, and for exponentially compounding his problems by lying.)

We can see this hypocrisy again in the recent reported instance in which anti-abortion politicians paid for an abortion when he caused a pregnancy. Wealthy, elite men have always found ways to procure illegal abortions when necessary in their own lives; it is women, especially poor women, who must be punished for living with the consequences of their actions under anti-abortion laws.

For a truly revealing example of this dynamic of selective morality in a larger context, which relates directly to Mark Sanford and John Ensign, listen to Jeff Sharlet's interview with Terry Gross on yesterday's episode of Fresh Air. (Well worth listening to, whether you download the podcast or sit in front of your computer to listen. It's the second segment in the show.) Sanford and Ensign have been involved with "The Family," a secretive, powerful fundamentalist Christian organization that explicitly believes that they can identify God's chosen ones, elite and powerful leaders whom God wants to rule. And if you are a chosen one, you can be a murderer or dictator (such as Siad Barre in Somalia and Suharto in Indonesia) and still do God's Work. Sharlet said The Family's philosophy/theology is linked to ideas of American power; paternalistic, dangerous, and away from law and regulation. After all, if God is in charge and the hand of God directs the free market and America's imperialist adventures, who needs laws to protect us?

Think this sounds esoteric? The Family's house on C Street currently houses at least five Congressmen. The Family started the national prayer breakfast back in the 1950's, a tradition that continues to this day, accompanied week of lobbying by foreign officials (lots of defense ministers).

So yes, John Edwards, John Ensign, and Mark Sanford, I care when you start acting like Scarlett O'Hara. As Rhett Butler said, "You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole but is terribly terribly sorry he's going to jail." Because if your political philosophy and morality applies to me, but not to you, I want no part of it.

For more on this, and why it actually does relate back to our ideas about mothers and fathers, I recommend George Lakoff's work on the Strict Father (conservative) and Nurturant Parent (liberal) models of the world. The Strict Father is an authoritarian leader whose judgment cannot be questioned. "Because I said so" works in a Strict Father household, but a Nurturant Parent model requires more explanation---and more democratic rule--than that.

Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant is pretty accessible, and I recommend it. I had the chance to hear him speak last year, and while he is incredibly professorial in his delivery, everything he said made sense to me. Interestingly, his model explains why such disparate conservative causes including low taxation, referring to our enemies as "evildoers," captial punishment, anti-abortion, and anti-gay-marriage aggregate under the same tent. All have to do with black and white morality, right and wrong, us and them, and living under the rule of a strong father...one who can pretty much do as he wishes behind the scenes. Lakoff is a linguist, and he makes the point that each of us has some elements of the Strict Father and Nurturant Parent models ingrained in our brains. Conservatives have been better than Liberals in finding ways to use this knowledge to get their message across. Fortunately, President Obama is a much more effective communicator than recent candidates were, such as the inscrutable and wooden John Kerry.

The Bush years showed us where the Strict Father model got us. I have grown much more cynical over the years but I do still hope that we can continue to move toward a model of government that is transparent, accountable, and egalitarian in the sense that the same rules do apply to all of us, and that we create laws that respect people's ability to live their lives without requiring a hypocritical, authoritarian thumb to keep us in place.