FREE HEALTHCARE? YOU BET. COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS GETS LOTS OF IT.

          Healthcare in America has been a public and political obsession for quite a few years now. Its availability and cost rarely go unmentioned on evening newscasts. The rising cost of ACA/ObamaCare was fodder for the recent political party debates and will continue to be for the candidates in the general election.   

          But there is and has been free diagnostic care available to most any able-bodied citizen, and I’m letting you readers in on it now. All you have to do is get involved with charitable organizations that require a certification of your good health. Here’s an example:

·       Donate Blood at the Red Cross:

The first thing you get is a blood pressure reading. This is a huge indicator of overall health. Next, you get a measure of the iron in your blood which could indicate anemia. Your pulse is measured, since an elevated heart rate can indicate a variety of health issues. Once your blood is taken, it is lab tested for a host of things to include your blood type, e.g. A positive, O negative, etc., Hepatitis B and C, red blood antibodies that can indicate pregnancy, TB, HIV, Syphilis and other venereal diseases, antibodies that can indicate infection or the virus that causes a form of Leukemia. The Zika virus has recently been added to the list of infections for which donated blood is tested. If an infectious disease is discovered in your blood, you’re contacted by letter or phone and offered a chance to receive professional medical counseling. How’s that for free? All you need to do is donate a pint of blood, and you can do it every two months.

·       Volunteer at a Veterans Administration Hospital in a patient-contact capacity:

I’m a volunteer driver at our local VA hospital, and my gig puts me in contact with veterans coming in for or going home from their appointments. Drivers are provided a free annual physical, and that physical includes blood work, blood pressure, TB, urinalysis, hernia, physical mobility, reflexes, sight and hearing. Recently, I was offered (and accepted) a Hepatitis B shot series and got an ‘immunity’ result afterwards. As a vet myself, I’m hounded to get their free flu shot. Don’t want to drive? There are several other patient-contact volunteer gigs in the hospital facility.

·       Find a Clinical Trial to participate in:

As a guy with fair, sun damaged skin, I’ve participated in a half-dozen Clinical Trials involving topical ointments. Trials will differ in the variables required of volunteers, but I’ve routinely had my blood pressure checked, blood work performed, urinalysis and even EKGs. Icing on the cake is that I’m paid for each Trial for my mileage and time, often several hundred dollars. Since each drug is in ‘Trial’ phase, one might receive the actual drug or, rather, a placebo that has no medicinal effect. That is, of course, how the drug company determines the drug’s efficacy. If one does get the actual drug, then there’s a ‘treatment’ benefit as well.

          Our society offers free (or nearly so) health programs for older people, e.g. Medicare, and for low income folks, e.g. Medicaid, CHIP, etc., so it’s unrealistic to expect people in these circumstances to pursue such avenues for care. Working, mid-career adults most often have employee health plans. So, the people who should be exploring just these sorts of opportunities are the students or under-employed and/or part-time ‘Millennial’ young adults who had been expected to sign up for the ACA/ObamaCare but refused to do so. Collectively referred to as “Young Invincibles”, since they believe their youthful vitality gives them immunity to illness, they have the time and energy to take advantage of one or more sources of free care. Indeed, since each option I listed is heavy on tests that look for problems rather than treating ones that are discovered, they allow an opportunistic approach wherein a person delays ACA participation until a problem is discovered.

          So, if you have a son or daughter of that ‘Invincible’ generation and are pulling your hair out over their cavalier attitude towards expensive health insurance, maybe suggest they start giving Red Cross blood donations regularly. While such a ‘mini-physical’ every couple of months may not motivate them, ask them to consider the benefit that their ‘Invincible’ blood will provide for adults and children whose health is less robust.

          VA Hospitals are located in most large cities, and they maintain websites for volunteer opportunities, for example:

                   http://www.portland.va.gov/giving/index.asp

         

          Though volunteering has rewards for any generation, it’s older, retired folks who most often have the time and inclination to do so. However, for Millennials, whose political focus on social welfare issues is well documented, finding four or five hours a week to help out at a VA hospital could be a hugely enlightening and informative experience. Each shift would, indeed, be a free history lesson as they hear first-hand the unfathomable tales of men and women who lived in an America the younger generation will have a hard time believing ever existed. Receiving, for themselves, some free diagnostic health information will seem trivial by comparison with those ‘lessons’.

          Clinical Trials can be found in local media and on a government website:

                                      https://clincaltrials.gov

          The time and duration of such trials may be an impediment for many people, but the free medical diagnostic tests and financial reimbursements provided can more than make up for the inconvenience. Moreover, for younger professionals in the healthcare or related industries, to participate in the ‘business’ of medicine, to actually see and participate in the creation of a new drug, might foster a career-directional epiphany of immense value.

          Free medical care was the focus of this posting, but we all know that nothing is truly without cost. The organizations involved incur large expenses for the examinations and tests provided. But as non-profit or governmental organizations (Red Cross, VA), our society as a whole ponies up the money. The costs of Clinical Trials conducted by for-profit drug companies will be factored into the cost of new drugs, and those costs are borne by the consumer. Blood donors, volunteers and Trial participants are paying with time, inconvenience or, literally, their blood. Thus, a young citizen who receives, as a benefit of serving his or her community, a clean bill of health, might gain a new perspective on ‘Entitlements’, and learn the economic lesson that something valuable that’s given away, will always be in short supply.

Bill Gritzbaugh

September 23, 2016

DNA and the INNER CITY: A PROGRAM TO BRING FATHERS TOGETHER WITH THEIR CHILDREN

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighting advances in DNA analysis triggered a memory for me of an idea (widely held) I’ve had about using DNA technology to bring families back together. Somehow, some way, our society needs to bring motivated men back into contact with children that they’ve voluntarily abandoned or from which they’ve been involuntarily driven or, as important, that they didn’t know they’d fathered. The DNA match program I envision would include men who want to establish their biological relationship with children they know or suspect they’ve fathered and/or who’d like to find children they didn’t know they had. That some mothers aren’t sure of or don’t know the fathers of their children is just a fact of life, and that fact makes a DNA match program all the more worthwhile.

          Everyone who follows the news is aware of the gun carnage in many inner cities (425 deaths year-to-date in Chicago), intractable poverty, low rates of employment, low graduation rates, and, in general, a pall of despair hanging over such communities. It has been argued that high rates of out-of-wedlock births that create thousands of boys and girls growing up in fatherless homes plays a huge role in the aforementioned problems. So, it is reasonable to believe that a program to reunite biological fathers with their offspring in high crime areas (initially) might have a positive effect on family behavioral patterns. The “Alpha-male” is a scientific fact.

                    Recent statistics show 73% of black kids are born of single mothers. Whites are at 29%, Hispanics at 53% and even Native Americans are at 66%. Not all of these kids live in dysfunctional households, but crime statistics dictate that many do. Thus, a young woman struggles to raise her children, often on Public Assistance, in neighborhoods populated by other women in similar circumstances, and eventually this matriarchal sub-society becomes the multi-generational ‘normal’. Men are hanging around to be sure. But the matriarchal sub-society keeps them marginalized at arm’s length for perverse economic necessity. As those kids reach adolescence, the mother/grandmother/aunt often loses control of them, and disaster looms as the kids gravitate to gangs for a sense of belonging, camaraderie and the gang’s own perverted role as disciplinarian.

          Arguments against the choices women make, e.g. having babies without marriage or, indeed, any substantive relationship with the father(s), are attacked, if the mother is a minority, as politically incorrect at best, racism at worst, thus ensuring that the trend continues. So the cycle of poverty, violence and hopelessness moves along decade after decade with those Americans caught up in that cycle effectively playing no productive role in our overall society. Rarely mentioned, again due to political correctness, is the eroding of our broader culture as the pathological manifestations emanating from such dysfunction spreads into it.

Would the reintroduction of the biological father to a child’s life be a net positive, and why would a guy want to suddenly discover he has one or more children, possibly with one or more women? Because a lot of the men who have fathered those children feel regret, some don’t have much going on in their lives, don’t have much to take pride in or be proud of and, frankly, are getting older and would like to have an opportunity to have a real ‘family’ experience before it’s too late to do so. Sadly, some of the fathers might be incarcerated. Likewise, a father might find out a son or daughter is incarcerated. No matter, in my view. The reestablishment of ‘blood’ presents an opportunity for a brighter or more substantive future. Let the chips fall where they may.

 Why would a child of one of these absent fathers want him back into their life to any degree, large or small? How about someone to look up to, someone who’s looking out for them, normal human curiosity, filling a void, wanting a grandfather around for their own children, wanting to fill that empty seat at the Christmas Dinner table. The reasons one has to search out a son or daughter or father are highly subjective. But consider the effort so many adopted children expend to find birth parents. Who’s to say that such desire wouldn’t exist among other fatherless children?

          Some of the mothers would balk at a father suddenly appearing for their minor children. Others might leap at a chance to introduce a father-figure to an unruly son or daughter. However, many potential reunions would be between adult children and their fathers, outside the control of a possibly resentful mother. That’s a ‘family’ dynamic that will have to work itself out as the new relationships evolve.      

Skeptics might say that only ne’re-do-well fathers would seek matches with children in hopes of reaping financial gain from them or their mothers. Conversely, the kids/mothers might hope to gain financially from their emergent fathers. Both scenarios could happen, but so what? Maybe some lives will be enriched literally as well as figuratively. But reality will set in quickly as it always does, and the substance or lack thereof of the new relationships will depend on the individuals involved.

How does a DNA match program get going? Advertise the free service that allows anyone to voluntarily enter a DNA database with the intent to be cross-matched with unknown/missing family members. Set up pilot programs in several target cities using ‘faith-based’ organization volunteers (the LDS Church/Mormons would be my first call). Storefronts with nurses taking cotton swab samples from the interior cheek surfaces of participants or opening and labeling mailed-in samples is all we’re talking about. The criminal justice system should have no reason to impede an inmate’s participation by mail. Lab services will be donated or discounted. DNA match results would be mailed or emailed simultaneously to parents and children or their guardians. At that point it’s up to those individuals to decide what to do next, but they’d be highly encouraged to move forward to a physical get-together. Such first meetings might be worthy of a reality TV series. Who knows? Maybe the Discovery Channel would fund the entire program for the ‘exclusive’ production rights.

 The database must be separate and firewalled from the databases maintained by many state criminal justice systems for the obvious issue of personal privacy. The Wall Street Journal article mentioned above was in regards to solving ‘cold’ criminal cases. The program would collapse if participants even thought that their data would be shared. Once the intended matches are effected, the data would be destroyed.

          Naïvely but hopefully, I envision, several years hence, that many urban communities will see plummeting out-of-wedlock births, kids staying in school to graduate, crime rates falling to historic lows and dads saying goodbye to wives and kids at the front door as they head off to work. That will necessitate vast improvement in local job opportunities and, equally important, a concomitant reconsideration of the myriad social welfare programs that made dads superfluous to being with. Good luck with that.

         

Bill Gritzbaugh

September 3, 2016