Stirring My Scots Blood

No one told me how pleasant an MRI could be.

I'd expected it to be a little challenging, to feel a little bit entombed in that tube, surrounded by unsettling roarings and thumpings and rhythmic pulses as magnetic energies surged around and through my body.  Claustrophobic panic isn't ever helpful in a procedure, so I'd considered calming exercises, tools from meditation and prayer that would gird up my loins for the process.

I needn't have worried.

It was profoundly restful, and on several occasions, I had to attend to not falling asleep, which might have messed with the imaging process.  But it was more than restful.  No-one had told me that it was possible to feel the magnetic fields as they surged through your body.  It's not common, but there are folks who swear up and down that the electromagnetic pulses set off a response in their nervous system, and given that I'm just the teeniest bit hypersensitive to things, I guess I'm in that camp.  

CHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUK, the machine would go, and with each beat, I'd feel a peculiar tickling, like every nerve along a plane would activate.  It felt like I was being bisected, over and over again, each slice very faintly pleasurable, like a caress of energy, an aurora in my flesh.  With that came a deep, comfortable warming, and it was lovely.  

"This is really nice," I thought, "I'd pay money for this."

Which, Lord have mercy, I did.

The bill, when it came, was well over four thousand dollars.  That's for the procedure only.  Having a radiologist look at the results for ten minutes was another two hundred dollars.  

I have insurance, thank the Maker and my congregation, so my out of pocket costs were less.  Blue Cross Blue Shield negotiated the asking price of the procedure down to a wee bit over three thousand bucks, of which the "patients responsibility" was eight hundred bucks.  I paid seventy two dollars and seventy three cents of the two hundred dollars for the radiologist.   Total cost to me: over nine hundred dollars.  Total cost to the insurer:  over four thousand dollars.

So, combined, roughly five grand total, for a thirty minute non-invasive procedure and ten minutes to assess the results.

I have Scots blood, through my paternal grandmother Arline Tionesta MacDougall, and this outlay stirred that thrifty gene more than electromagnetic pulses ever could.  I know, we all know, all of us, that this is too much money, that we're being fleeced by a system that doesn't even begin to represent the actual costs of the services provided.

Let's do that familiar "how much does it cost elsewhere" exercise.  Were I to get an MRI from a private clinic in Glasgow, Scotland, how much would it run me?  Here, I'm talking about going outside of the public health system in the United Kingdom to a privately operated for-profit clinic, and paying out of pocket.  I found a nice little clinic in Glasgow.  Costs for the process there varied, based on location and procedure, but for the lower pelvic/prostate, I could expect to pay about four hundred dollars, exchange rate dependent, and that includes radiological review and a formal actionable medical report.

Four hundred dollars.   A round trip flight to Glasgow?  Nine hundred dollars.  Two nights in a nice hotel in Glasgow?  Four hundred dollars.  Meals?  Two hundred dollars.  A rental car to putter around Glasgow for two days?  Three hundred dollars.

Total cost, to fly across the Atlantic, stay in a nice hotel, eat well, have the procedure, do a little tourism, then fly back?  Two thousand two hundred dollars, nearly two thousand bucks less than the "best price" Blue Cross Blue Shield could negotiate here.  

Same procedure, same results, half the price.  How many times have you seen this same exercise done?  The "you fly halfway across the earth, get a procedure done, and fly back for cheaper" schtick is well worn, and yet still we tolerate the parasitic drain of our bloated mess of a health care system.

Defenders of that system claim that it's the "gold standard," the best in the world, and that we should be grateful for the privilege.

But we know that's a load of bollocks.  

Christian America

Two recent studies have surfaced an increasing trend in the thinking of Americans.  And no, it has nothing to do with Glee.

Rather, it's that now between 42% (if a Pew Study is to be believed) or 49% (if recent data gleaned the General Social Survey is to be believed) of Americans feel that being Christian is a central element of American identity.  America is a Christian Nation, or so almost half of America believes. 

This is really quite remarkable.  As I've noted before, such thinking shows a complete misunderstanding of the nature of Christian faith.  There can't ever be a Christian nation, not in the sense of a geographic region governed by laws and sharing a common culture.  We put that to rest back with Augustine.  Christianity is not a system of government, relying on the coercive power of the sword to enforce itself.  When it becomes that, and Lord forgive us it often has, it betrays the Gospel.  

Equally troubling is the complete failure of what appears to be functionally half of our population to grasp the nature and purpose of our constitutional republic.  America is the land of liberty, dagflabbit.  We are defined by our freedom, and our respect of the freedoms of others.    The fundamental principles of our republic are conducive to the free practice of Christian faith, yes.  I am grateful for that blessing.   But they are also conducive to practicing Judaism without fear of oppression.  And to being Muslim.  And Buddhist.  And if you so choose, being an atheist.   Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and atheists who embrace and defend the liberties of our Constitution are completely American.

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty does not read "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be Christian."

The Inviolability of Israel

American politics is littered with third rails, topics or subjects that can't be broached or addressed in any meaningful way without frying the individual in question.

BZZZZZAP.

I think that was recent nominee for a senior intelligence position.

That highly electrified rail is the complex relationship between the United States and Israel.

On the one hand, Israel is a parliamentary democracy. It's an essentially free state in a region that is defined by monarchies, despots, and repressive theocracies. It has every right to exist, and exist in peace. It is also a reliable and natural ally for our constitutional democracy.

On the other hand, Israel is a nation state, with all of the flaws and foibles that exist in such entities. It is not perfect, any more than the United States...or any of us individually...is perfect.

After it's most recent election, Israel now is governed by what may prove to be an unusually truculent coalition of nationalists and ultra-nationalists. Given the ongoing provocations by Hamas, the results of the recent election were predictable. Human beings who perceive themselves as under attack will always seek hardliners to protect them, and Israelis are no exception.

Their new foreign minister, for instance, is an ultraconservative supporter of the expansion of settlements, who views any suggestion of negotiations with Israel's opponents as evidence of treason. He supports the institution of mandatory loyalty oaths for Israelis, to the point at which he's at odds with some of the ultra-orthodox, who view this as a violation of Torah. Their new prime minister is a hard core hawk, and one of the architects of the ill-conceived wars in Lebanon in the 1980s. Take this cadre of leaders, add in the militants on the other side of the equation who need conflict to justify their existence, and the odds are good that things will at some point get messy. Or rather, messier.

The challenge, of course, is that many folks have a great deal of difficulty "supporting Israel" if that support requires every Israeli action to be a priori correct. In the United States, those views are largely held by American conservative Christians, whose attitudes towards Israel are governed by a strangely warped biblicism. Using a few verses of scripture picked out of context, suddenly even speaking a word of concern about Israel becomes forbidden. Israel is God's Country! You can't say anything bad about the Land of the Promise! At least, not until after Jesus comes back, at which point they'll all either bow down before him or go to hell.

This is particularly strange given where the Bible stands on the subject. Pretty much the entire prophetic literature is filled with invective against Israel and Judah. God is endlessly pissed off at the stubbornness of His Chosen People, and does a fair amount of kicking their butts. That doesn't break the covenant, mind you. He still loves 'em. But when they step away from covenant and/or become tools of injustice, they are not above being held to account. As far as God is concerned, Zion is not inviolable.

The challenge, of course, is how to articulate a concern for justice without seeming to threaten the integrity of that often embattled democratic state. Progressives and liberals in the U.S. generally do a pretty crappy job of this, falling into rhetoric that only alienates them from the very folks they're trying to influence. My own denomination has managed to do a pretty clumsy job of it, alternating between open dialogue and destructive invective.

Not sure the way out of this one...but it's a serious conundrum.