Today’s roundup brought to you by oh look a feather toy!

An acquaintance of mine shared a post that linked to Peter Singer’s latest piece in the NYT Magazine, “Why We Must Ration Healthcare.” Most of the article focuses on the fact that health care is currently rationed in the U.S., whether by price or by less tangible factors such as ER wait times. I don’t disagree with that part; that’s nothing more than a clear-eyed look at the reality that the American health care system has barriers to accessibility. Where Singer goes off the rails for a demonstration of Able-Bodied Privilege 101, however, is when he discusses how to put a value on human lives as a precursor to putting a value on health care. In order to demonstrate the utility of quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) in rationing health care, he uses the example of how an able-bodied person reacts to a hypothetical situation in which they become quadraplegic, and how their desire to live changes. He then goes on to present a situation in which persons with disabilities (PWD) are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: he suggests that if a PWD is happy with their life, they don’t need any treatment that would improve their lives, and if a PWD is not happy with their life, then it would be wasteful to spend money on treatment that would improve their lives.

I consider this a must-read for anyone who is new to disability rights. Pizza Diavola does an excellent job showing where Singer’s logic simply falls apart, and in fact his arguments do not make sense without assuming the supremacy of the able body. But disability is not an inherently bad experience; it only becomes this phenomenon of tragedy and suffering when society refuses to provide support for people of all sorts, rather than upholding the narrow and unstable health ideal.

Following Singer’s logic, we would pretty much never seek to improve our lives in any way because to do so would admit that we were not happy with our lives beforehand, and if we were happy with it, then it would be useless to do anything to change it. How this is seen as a rational analysis of New York Times caliber, I’m not sure. But apparently Peter Singer hates the wheel, the microwave oven, cotton fabric (admitting that life wasn’t good enough without versatile and insulating body covering!), the printing press, public education, agriculture, language, music, sunscreen, and buildings (admitting that life wasn’t good enough without shelter from the elements!). Among other things.

But because disability is constructed as a tragedic deviation, we end up with nonsensical, circular arguments such as these. And it has unfortunate influence, and will further marginalize people on the basis of their inherent inferiority and thus forfeited right to life (any life, according to Singer, who would have us all killed or otherwise eliminated rather than complicating things for the currently abled — and no, unfortunately, this is not exaggeration or extrapolation; he has advocated exactly this).

Help Find the Cure for Disablism!

Disablism is a common disorder which can begin in early childhood, though its symptoms are often much more marked in adulthood. Without preventative measures, disablism can grow into a chronic condition that becomes more difficult to cure with time. Early detection and proper treatment are key to helping those with disablism lead stronger, more productive lives.

FAQs

Is disablism contagious?
The jury is still out on this question. While some epidemiologists believe disablism may have a contagious aspect and may spread virulently, other researchers emphasize individual health habits and responsibilities.

What is the treatment?
Treatment varies by the degree to which the patient is affected. Treatment focuses on creating new, nondisablist behaviors. For patients unrectifiably deficient in empathy, legal remedies may be required. Please ask your doctor for more details.

What can I do?
Most importantly, educate yourself about disablism. Ask your health care provider, “am I disablist?” Equally important, watch for early signs of disablism in your loved ones and seek early treatment. Disablism is much more cureable in its early stages than when its victims become homicidal or harm others. In addition, help raise awareness about disablism. Discuss disablism and its harmful effects with others.

For more information and resources on disablism, call the Cure Disablism Network at 1-555-BE HUMAN.

This clip from British tv show That Mitchell and Webb Look has made the rounds as a short and sweet parody of gendered advertising. I think it is also useful as a look at medicalization and the way medical conditions are presented in popular culture.

Transcript:

[Blonde, average-looking woman standing in front of white background, reacting to voiceover by crouching and grimacing, with graphic overlay of radiating circles emphasizing different areas]
Woman: Ow. My stomach!
Man’s voice: Do you suffer from gut agony?
Woman: And my head!
Man’s voice: Tension head? [Woman nods, grimacing] Got that bloated feeling?
Woman [beginning to look slightly surprised and self-conscious]: Ooh…
Man’s voice: Inevitable wrinkles? The beginnings of lady moustache? [Woman covers lower half of face with hands] And now you’ve pissed yourself again? [Woman crosses legs] Women. You’re leaking, aging, hairy, overweight, and everything hurts –
[Young boy walks on set in white dress shirt splattered in colorful stains]
Man’s voice: — and your children’s clothes are filthy! No wonder men long for other, less clammy women. For God’s sake, sort yourself out.
[Image appears on screen of assortment of several hundred personal care products, captioned "APPROX $279.99, THE LOT."]
[Woman walks onto set toward couch, with large, bulging full tote bag on one shoulder]
Woman [tiredly]: Now I’m free to live my own life, my way! [falls back onto couch]
[Scene changes to white man in bathroom with razor]
Man’s voice: Men! Shave and get drunk!
[Man has satisfied look on his face as he opens medicine cabinet, finds glass of beer sitting inside, picks it up and smiles smugly, taking a sip]
Man’s voice: Because you’re already brilliant.
[Man smiles widely at camera as woman's hand appears, groping his chest]

ginmar speaks movingly about mental illness, military veterans, and the phenomenon of “fallen women.” A few pieces; there’s much more.

It’s a pain in the ass to experience. Frankly, you’re no fun to live around during this. I mean, people have been brought up on movie mental illness, where you turn into a sweet, soulful, funny, insightful, tragic, tormented character who Teaches Important Lessons, before dying in a beautiful way that gives the hero or heroine a chance to win an Oscar.

It’s especially bad if you’re a woman, because you’re supposed to live for others, do for others, and do this al behind the scenes. The fact is that women who transgress in some way—bad mothers, not mothers, convicts, the sick, the non-sexually rebellious—-are often abandoned. Women are supposed to stand by their man. What goes unsaid, what’s kept secret is that ill women are resented, dumped, and have to face a dual burden of illness and ill-treatment. There are approximately 6,500 homeless female veterans of this war. Homelessness is often the worst and final stop on the mental illness ladder. It’s bottom. Then, too, homeless women in general are ignored. When the truth is overwhelmingly awful and about women, people just shrug their shoulders and put it down to life. When women get angry about this treatment, they often find the mentally ill label used to stigmatize them.

[...]

Suicide tidied things up neatly. By killing herself, the victim had provided her family with a tragedy over which they could weep, instead of an inconvenient complication who aroused questions that were literally unthinkable for the thinkers of the day. With her gone, so was any reminder.

[...]

What’s interesting is that both male and female soldiers are often regarded in this way: better a flag-draped coffin than a living, complex, and often angry veteran. What a drag. Better a tragedy than a complication [...]

That’s the work of a certain class. The resentment is very much the attitude of the person who discovers that those who serve are also those who know their worth. That wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal. You’re supposed to work round the clock, then disappear when not needed, grateful and humble for scraps from the table.

Which is why maybe soldiers like me, especially women, are often greeted with sadistic gloating when we crumble.

Insurers charge women more than they charge men… studies show the effect is all the more pronounced when you’re dealing with health savings accounts and other forms of high-deductible coverage. A Harvard study from a year or so back ran the numbers and found that men under 45 racked up about $500 in yearly, out-of-pocket costs, while women spent closer to $1,200. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the lead author of the study, summed up the findings starkly. “When an employer switches all his employees into a consumer-driven health plan, it’s the same as giving all the women a $1,000 pay cut, on average, because women on average have $1,000 more in health costs than men.”

Here’s why: For most of their lives, men and women use health care very differently. Men seek episodic care: I sawed off my thumb, fell off a mountain, tried to stop an SUV with my Civic. Contact with the health system is relatively rare, and most everything is covered by insurance. Conversely, women seek a lot of routine care. Check-ups, pap-smears, reproductive health care, etc. The expenses are small, but they’re regular. So when you move towards health coverage where small, regular expenses come out of pocket, you’re erecting financial barriers to the type of care sought by women.

It’s also a good object lesson as to the folly of HSAs. The type of care that HSAs put a higher price tag on, and thus discourage, are small and discrete interactions with the health system. So they disadvantage mammograms and pap smears, but leave lumbar surgeries and angioplasties untouched. Anyone want to guess which category accounts for the majority of our health spending? Anyone want to guess which type of care studies suggest we discourage, and which type of care studies suggest we make more broadly accessible?

Why is this not on the front page of every newspaper in the country right now? On the screen of every cable news watching citizen?

What do you think the effect of this is on single mothers? What do you think the effect of this is on poor women? What do you think the effect of this is on disabled women?

How many people are unnecessarily unemployed because the health care that would allow them to work is denied them? How many people end up in the ER in the middle of the night because they put off routine care for so long, because it was money they didn’t have? Money that could instead go toward their education? Money that could instead go toward their children’s school activities?

How many children lose mothers, husbands wives, parents daughters, when one more woman ends up with cervical cancer because she didn’t have the time or money to spare?

Do we really think we can patch things over by throwing a couple dollars at the Komen foundation and calling it a day?

Think about your own mother. Your sister. Your daughter. Your partner, your lover, your best friend. Do you really want to just let this go because “that’s just how things are”?

I am tagging this one under “privilege” to remind you, the reader, if you are able-bodied and able-minded, that I, the bitch, the cripple, am subsidizing your health care. And that woman in the Section 8 housing who just got evicted because of the money she’s spent getting run around the ringer about those abnormal cells on her Pap test? She is subsidizing the yearly checkup you don’t even bother to get most of the time. And when you go home with your Z-Pack, knowing that you are going to be free and clear after seven days and a $10 copay, know that the money to pay for that came directly out of the pocket of that woman and her two infant children. And I hope you’ll find that redistribution worth it when she dies at 42 of cancer that could have been prevented.

Welfare queens? Taxpayer dollars? Hard-earned money? I don’t want to hear it. Fuck you.