The Olympics are, admittedly, the only sports event that wholly grabs my heart and mind. There is something about watching each athlete take on the impossible, stretch the boundaries of excellence into new constellations of human potential. There is something about the four years in between the Olympic games and what it takes to work that long and hard to try again or for the first time that reminds me of the addiction of determination. I also know that this kind of determination resides in the hearts of each of us only needing to be un-leased by pure inspiration and hope.

Fear does not have the power that personal resolve does. Working hard in order to not fail is so different that working hard in order to succeed. Even for patients facing life-threatening illnesses, fear of dying does not have the same octane as the determination to live.

As I watched the video of the new and uplifting We are the World, I saw not a chorus of stars, but a chorus of lives, joining in the celebration of life…I saw the young Haitian boy waving in rhythm atop the ruins of fallen buildings. I saw the joy of collective determination to move forward and heard the song and words of hope coming from the hearts of those who have everything and those who have lost everything. And, again, a reassessment of what matters.

Maybe all of us who interface on the internet, who can afford to write blogs and read them, who can browse the world from living-rooms that are heated inside homes that are safe, who know that however it looks today, things will change tomorrow… maybe we are all living in a state of grace.

Two years ago, the holiday season was forever marred by the Tsunami in Indonesia This year, we being the New Year with a tragic earthquake in Haiti, a country so poor that the rebuild will be challenging to say the least.

Earthquakes are forces of nature. Election results are forces of voters. Recovery from cancer is about forces of mind and body. Ethics are forces of values.

It seems to be that the battle of values and human objectives is at odds with so many other competing priorities. And, different values can be perceived as no values.

I am at a loss to explain how we as a nation cannot accept two facts: We already take care of everyone as the emergency rooms of hospitals can attest. We take care of few before an emergency. We all hold on to what we have until we don’t have it, meaning 70% of the citizens have health insurance they are afraid to lose.

For anyone who knows about mixing business acumen with healthcare ethics, it is clear that transformation…a kind of “born-again” experience regarding priorities seems to occur when someone is caught in the very health care system they are holding onto. When insurance argues about coverage while patients languish; when employers rightfully claim they cannot afford to cover health insurance, which is an all-or-none proposition; when a loved without health insurance one becomes critically ill and your own insurance cannot even be gifted…this is where our current system fails. It fails on issues outside of medical science. While stories abound about the holes in the current system, equally compelling stories are told of the medical miracles available here and how a single individual’s life and future was saved.

I am at a loss to know what will happen regarding this health care debate. I can only hope that staying healthy remains an option. I do know that my niece who lost her job two years ago, only a year after having surgery for thyroid cancer, fell through the cracks of Massachusetts universal coverage….she told me that she made too much money while receiving unemployment payments.

Any answers on your side??

When I wrote about the World War I Christmas truce, part of me…the idealist…was thinking how wonderful it would be to have peace a day at a time….because war and damage and death is just so horrific. What would it be like to have the Taliban and the Pakistanis and the Afghanis and the US soldiers celebrate Christmas together? Remember, Islam and Judaism and Christianity all share the story of Genesis and all celebrate goodness around the same time of year.

I am a harpist and have played on Christmas Eve for more years than I can count…in so many different churches, during so many different crises and economies, and with a world facing so many challenges that seemed unresolvable. So, this time of year is a time when thoughts of pain and suffering and the stories of lives impacted are very close to my heart. I just know when major life events happen near Christmas or New Years, or any other major holiday, the holidays are never the same.

One Christmas, about 10 years ago, Dallas and I played at Renown Medical Center on the oncology unit for four days over the Christmas Eve through the weekend, with two of our closest friends who had never met each other were each suffering from cancers that would take them each not long after the New Year. It was hard to think of the families and staff in the hospital facing perhaps their last Christmas together, suffering more because of the paradox of the best time of year and the worst time of life. We learned that even in the greatest pain, healing could happen, if only for a few hours. We can all be well together, conscious of the preciousness of life.

Am I really dreaming…of things that can only happen in dreams? Or is it possible that in our individual humanity, it the core of who we are, we can actually just stop killing each other? The economy will recover, but lives changed by wars remain changed and the recovery is far more difficult, hardly measured in a stock market or interest rates.

The final verses of the Christmas Truce Carol reads:

Their rifles all they set aside,
One impulse to obey;
‘Twas just the men on either side,
Just men — and Christmas Day.

They dug the graves for all their dead
And over them did pray:
And Englishmen and Germans said:
“How strange a Christmas Day!”

Between the trenches then they met,
Shook hands, and e’en did play
At games on which their hearts were set
On happy Christmas Day.

Not all the emperors and kings,
Financiers and they
Who rule us could prevent these things —
For it was Christmas Day.

Oh ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.

Regardless of differing beliefs and practices, it is difficult for me not to joyously celebrate the spirit of birthing a new peace each year because it is in the air, everywhere…and it gives us all pause to consider why it is only on Christmas Day in this season we speak of these things. This week is Chanukah, celebrating the hope of light and of persistence of goodness over evil, a heroic story of faith and miracles.

I personally wish and pray that next year at this time, the stories we tell each other are inspired because we crossed the bridge from war to peace, that more healing is going on than dis-ease, and because the sunlight of a new dawn for each of us and our families is evidenced everywhere…

God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.

This is the story of the US Healthcare System. Born from the Judeo-Christian mission of caring for the ill, this system was educated through a series of parochial and public opinions and theories. In addition, as new science birthed new medical and nursing practices, Healthcare tried to accommodate new demands and higher costs. When it went through the inevitable adolescent stages, this System kicked and screamed to try to relieve itself of parental pressures from the past and it invented HMO’s, complex insurance policies, and, most of all, cash incentives to provide a kind of luxurious lifestyle of technologies, pharmaceuticals, and surgeries.

Without going into what midlife looked like, it is clear that the US Healthcare System is now suffering from a terminal disease. Its lifestyle has been indulgent; it has been gambling with its own as well as the lives of others; it has serious heart disease and suffers from drug overdose on a regular basis. In addition, it has a degenerative condition that is most expensive to treat, has no cure and paralyzes its ability to function.

Since neither the US Health System nor we are ready to give up, how do we administer palliative care to a terminal Healthcare System that refuses to die? How do we ease the pain of systemic and faulty assumptions? I feel like we are hanging on to an understanding of healthcare that is on life-support. The idea that we are each at risk of not being able to receive the medical care we need when and if we need it is unbearable. If we have insurance, if we work hard, if live our life is on a foundation of personal responsibility, how is it possible that we could still be among the few percent who will not receive healthcare benefits even if the current healthcare reform bill is passed?

I find the reports and dialogue equally disturbing because it seems that no one wants to really own their own risk in the current system. The uninsured are talked about as if we are not them. The underinsured are talked about as if they are just unlucky. And the insured are holding on to what they think is an unconditional lifetime guarantee.

So if we delivered narcotics to the Healthcare System that is now decaying in front of us, what would happen? Did Healthcare sign a living will? Did it put its assets into an irrevocable trust? Do we put it on a ventilator even if it is brain dead? Does anyone really care about what happens to this Healthcare System other than its beneficiaries?

When it comes to what any of us inherit from this dying and broken System, at best, is a somewhat loose promise that if we really get sick we will get what we need.

I am becoming more exhausted behind this discussion. It is plaguing my own heart to know that it is somehow acceptable that some man, woman, or child will not receive the care that they need when they need it. It is painful to think that the care will come only when it is an emergency and not when earlier treatment could prevent pain, suffering, and even death. Why is the acceptable?

Spending time in Scandinavia was a great break for me…having a change in my routine, however, didn’t change my level or intensity of concerns. Everyone with whom I could engage in conversation, was talking about the health insurance crisis in America (among other things, like wars and economies). While many elderly already have medicare, those of us not yet on medicare, or perhaps too young to even contemplate qualifying for medicare, remain unsafe if not doubtful about what kind of care we will get if we need it. Personally, I was and am baffled by the disparities between European health care policies and practices and those now under scrutiny here at home.

How is it possible that every other industrialized country takes care of their citizens medical needs and we shun the idea..?

Iceland, for example, led the way in national economic collapse a year ago. The whole country was victimized by greed, bad investments, and failed banks. And, to make things clearer, there was no FDIC insurance: People lost millions of Krona…dollars to them…and had and will have no recourse nor reimbursement. Savings were just lost, as if none of it had existed. The value of the Icelandic Krona fell by 50%. All businesses dependent on imports froze and remain frozen: imported products doubled in cost overnight. All of this, and yet not one person is without health care coverage…Not a single man, woman, or child, whether employed or not has to even worry about it.

We met with old two friends in Norway who do not know each other, and who have lived there for decades. Neither can return to the U.S. for the primary reason that they cannot afford health insurance. One had prostate cancer just two years ago…and, while treatment is completed and his prognosis excellent…he knows that having had cancer, he cannot afford the insurance premiums. The other, while never having had cancer, is a human resources professional now unemployed….so, this is obvious: no job, no insurance. Only in America.

I was somewhat relieved that the health insurance companies showed their hand by threatening to raised premiums if insurance was not legally mandated for everyone…just the threat of escalating prices created more momentum for a public option.

Please understand, that I have no malice towards insurance company employees nor their primary mission. In my research I found a 1916 paper presented to the American Medical Association (Rabinow, ‘Health Insurance and Public Health,” 1016, AMA) in the US. The explanation at that time was the insurance was a means of distributing financial losses caused by illness and disease among many instead of only one person. What was being debated was “social health insurance” that implied “cooperation, control and financial assistance.” (You can find the document through Google Books…free download.) THe paper was not necessarily pro socialize medicine…but, I was stunned that we are approaching almost a century of discussions without resolution.

Thus, replacing “social health insurance” has been for-profit health insurance , a market-driven commodity, when, in my opinion, it should be a non-profit utility…like power, water, and all other services we all need to live. Furthermore, there is just too much incentive to exploit the sick. Imagine saying, “Yea! An epidemic, just what the quarterly report needs!!”

So, in my estimation, this is the final battle-ground of values: money vs health; market-driven vs service-driven; insured vs uninsured; life vs death. Remember months ago, I had brought up the issue of whether everyone should be insured and why the poorest uninsured child poses a global threat? The H1N1 Virus began with the poor health of one child in Mexico, causing a global pandemic. That is why none of us can afford to not take care of everyone. We just live too close, travel too much, and interact too often. The world is too small to simply chose to deny healthcare to any group.

If all we did were to change the For-profits to Non-profits, the involvement of public interest would be there to oversee (as all non-profits are watched over because of their tax exempt status) and stock-holders would be exchanged for stake-holders…meaning, all of us would own all of IT!

An article in the New York Times this week pointed out that Hawaii has had employer-based, required insurance for 35 years…and saves money, everyone is healthier…even though everything is expensive in Hawaii. How do they do it???

At any rate, I’ve returned and rejuvenated…and inspired by spending time looking at how everyone else lives. Nonetheless, I remain disturbed by the fact that health is a luxury, not an assumption, that medical care is money-based not need-based, that being healthy seems to be a luxury for those who can afford it, and that in this most advanced and brilliant country in which I live, we cannot seem to figure this out.