Why Your Health Insurance is Making You Sick (Also: Why Should We Mourn?)

Penny’s burn from last winter. She treated it with a salve she made from the kitchen garden. It healed up real good. 

In the comments following Monday’s post, Bee made a statement (Medical insurance is what kills you) and asked a question (What happens on bucolic farms when you get a foot crushed by a tractor or something?), and being someone who’s thought a fair bit about insurance, illness, and injury as they pertain to this bucolic little life of ours, which in so very many ways is utterly dependent on our physical well being, I figured I’d dive into the fray. 

Bee is absolutely right: Health insurance is what kills us. And mostly it kills us because we let it kill us, because we allow the whole messed-up, soul-crushing, spirit-sucking medical-industrial complex to sow their seeds of fear and loathing and, in far too many cases, disease itself. And it kills us because we’re too scared to even imagine life outside of it. We can’t imagine poking our heads from under its protective cover because, as Bee quite logically asks Whacha gonna do ’bout that tractor on your foot? 

At its core, the problem seems simple enough: Like food and land, like clean water and clean air, like almost everything humans need to survive and even prosper, health insurance and the care it might (or – let’s be honest – might not) pay for has become a commodity, available to those who can afford it. True, there are options for those who cannot afford to pay in full (indeed, our insurance coverage is subsidized) or even at all, but there are many more options for those who can afford to pay, as anyone who’s navigated the constraints of a boiler plate policy can tell you.

But here’s the thing: Health insurance is not health care. Perhaps even more succinctly, health insurance cannot in and of itself provide its bearer with good health, and the tragic irony is that in protecting their access to the former, many, many people are watching the latter slowly slip from their grasp. This is because they can see no other way to maintain their insurance than by staying in a job that is sedentary, damaging to spirit and psyche, and leaves them little time or energy to perform basic health care tasks such as cooking and consuming real food, working lung and muscle on a regular basis, and even exercising the mind.

As noted, we are currently covered by health insurance, but we have gone long periods without it. All things being equal, I’d rather have it than not, because for all the things the medical-industrial complex is not so good at, there are a few things it is. Repairing tractor-crushed feet is one of them, as is treatment of any number of the potential homestead catastrophes we face on a daily basis. I don’t mean to dismiss the possibility of these catastrophes, the capacity of contemporary health care providers to remedy them, or the impact of their suffering. All are very real and worthy of consideration.

If fear of losing my health insurance were all that was keeping me from pursuing the life I wanted, here’s what I’d do. First, I’d see if I could find a high-deductable, catastrophic policy that would cover me just enough that I wouldn’t lose my shirt if indeed I did find myself with a mangled appendage. But second, and more profoundly, I’d try to remember that the best thing I could do for my health is to pursue the life that feels most meaningful to me, particularly if that life includes growing and eating real food, daily physical labor, a relative lack of stress, and a sense of purpose. I believe we should not overlook the value of these factors anymore than we should overlook the slim possibility of catastrophic accident.

One of the things we value deeply about this way of life is the extent to which we feel a sense of agency over our well being. Increasingly, this extends to our health care, as we acquire the skills and experience necessary for dealing with minor-and-even-moderate wounds and illnesses. We (and by “we,” I mean “Penny”) have spent a lot of time learning about medicinal plants, some of which we cultivate, many of which we forage. We have connected with a network of so-called “alternative” healers, like our MD-turned-homeopath, who does not accept insurance and charges $40 for a hour-long consultation. But mostly, we have come to understand that the land and our work upon it is our primary health care provider, and a damn good one at that.

Listen. There’s no absolute perfect answer to the health insurance dilemma. I get that. The whole system is way too far around the bend, and our individual circumstances are far too variable, for there to be an answer that applies to all. But one thing I suspect we all hold in common is the desire to live with vibrancy and purpose. And in that regard, at least in some cases, it might just be our fear of going without insurance that is making us sick.

Oh, and a poem, sent to me all the way from Brussels in the aftermath of Friday’s post. It’s by my friend Simon Clissold. I think it’s pretty good.

If the flood tides are rising
(as you say)
May I ask you what
Should we save?
The weapons of war,
The drugs of forgetting?
The arts of deceit
(or of destruction)?

I am looking around
I am looking everywhere
Which is why I ask
You where is that
Which should be saved?

If darkness is falling
(as you say)
May I ask you which
way to the light?
This man shouts in one direction
that man in another
Whom should we believe?

I hear voices calling
I hear voices everywhere
Which is why I ask
You where is that
Which we should take?

If the end is near
(as you say)
May I ask you what
Should I mourn?
The concrete jungles
The toxic rains
The empty sea (or praire)?

I am thinking hard
I am thinking of everything
Which is why I ask you
Why should we mourn?