It quietly was passed in the House, H.Res. 1243 on 6/9/2008 a resolution was passed to recognize the "immeasurable contributions of fathers in the healthy development of children" and therefore the bill is one "supporting responsible fatherhood."
This is not a unique approach. Values, often seen as unchanging, in fact often change. Take fatherhood...whether the erosion of the stigma of unmarried relationships has worsened relationships between dads and kids as single moms never marry their babies daddies or whether dads create children with multiple women and give little to no attention and support for any of them, or whether fathers in divorced households bicker over support supplied to their children or whether fathers fighting for more time with their children need to get a break in court, reaffirming values, clarifying values and acknowledging values has...well, a value.
This piece of seemingly meaningless legislation if it becomes law means that policies that grant insufficient visitation to dads, moms who leave dads off birth certificates in order to avoid legal obligations to the dad vis a vis their kids, may have to overcome this law ...maybe. Or maybe, like other laws it will just sit on the books.
Statements of values are as old as our Constitution, delineating rights and responsibilities based on our national values. Freedom of speech, right to assembly, all our Constitutional rights are supposed to represent the natural outcome of our commitment to certain values.
So what can the health services industry do? Our first goal should be to verbalize and come up with a text-based representation of our value. Right now the health services industry is not based on one value.
Perhaps our representatives could come up with a bill like HR Res 1243 for health services. Simple? Unfortunately not. As a nation we should be able to all commit to supporting health services policy that encourages and supports the maintenance and achievement of health for all our citizens...I mean, would any citizen be bold enough to vote against such a thing? That simple statement, that simple bill could guide our policy through the distracting maze of "balancing" interests and "competing" interests that has left US citizens pointing the finger at one sick person or another and blaming him/her for the cost of their health services. Maintenance and achievement of health for all our citizens would mean addressing the full range of problems that plague the human condition. Health insurance companies would no longer have the seemingly endless right to deny benefits to people based on their determination of insurance worthiness...we'd all be worthy. If they couldn't make a go of it for everyone, some other company would because Americans would not have it any other way.
Health services providers would not brazenly announce that they're not taking one form of insurance or another because it doesn't pay enough without the rest of the citizenry noting that such a policy singles out individuals for less treatment based on their health insurer. If doctors didn't want to practice medicine because their profit margins aren't big enough...someone else will.
Oh, is this unrealistic? Not if we clarify our values. Of course, a clarification of our values might also show that our values regarding the treatment of the sick in our society has changed. In fact, our legislation might mirror this change that perhaps our value is to maintain a robust and profitable health insurance company environment with sufficiently paid medical personnel by reducing the number of persons or conditions that cut into profits for such personnel through denials of insurance coverage and treatment of such individuals.
Okay, then that's our value, maintaining profitability for physicians and health insurers. That's reasonable, if we believe that without such protection there would no longer be health insurers or physicians for those healthy citizens left in the system.
I think we could learn a thing or two from this Fathers count too legislation, verbalize our values regarding health services and everything else falls into place. It is the attempt to disguise the overriding value at stake that creates confusion. If the value is money then any policy statement that tries to show that society cares for its sick and aging will appear phony in the face of the reality of lobbying and legislation that limit access, affordability and quality of health services for the sick. Such clarity of the bottom line value would clarify confusing ads like those of the American Medical Association which attempt to support health INSURANCE coverage as health SERVICES, implying that without health insurance people can't get to their devoted loving physicians. What? That's idiotic. Doctors support health insurance because it helps them get paid, so let the physicians state their real motivation. If physicians were trying to encourage people to get needed health care they would not discuss mandatory health insurance, they'd be advertising free clinics, how doctors will accept any kind of insurance, how physicians will give sliding scale fees for patients.
It is the blurring of lines in an attempt to SEEM like we value the health of our citizens in a time that clearly shows that we VALUE profits for health insurers and health services providers that confuses our proposals and actions regarding health services in this country.
So let's see the bill describing the VALUES we as Americans support for our health services industry and then the distracting confusion will stop. If it's money over people and health, commit to it, if it's overall health for all citizens, commit to it but a failure to identify a statement of what we as Americans value and desire for our health services environment leaves no room for a cohesive policy.
