Recently, I’ve been trying to learn more about the American Health Care System - it’s general workings, it’s history, it’s problems, etc... Today I listened to a great episode of "This American Life" on NPR. It described how insurance companies in the US evolved - starting in Baylor, Texas as a way to get people into hospitals during the depression ($1 a day was much more affordable than the cost of one trip to the hospital) and expanding during WWII when there weren’t enough workers to go around and companies needed to find ways to lure people to work for their business without offering pay raises (all salaries were frozen nation-wide as part of the war effort).Beyond chronicling the history of how American ended up with an absurd system in which employers pick health care for people, the show also discussed pet health insurance plans as a model for humans. Apparently these plans are less profit-driven and more of a win-win-win (pet’s family pays less, doctors get more, insurance makes a profit) than the human system. Who would’a thunk it? In charting the success of pet health care, they followed the story of Harriet the Hedgehog from Wisconsin who had to take anti-psychotic medicine (it worked!). Harriet made me ponder something entirely unrelated to health care - namely, where the hell did Sonic the Hedgehog’s looks come from?
No comments:
Post a Comment