special: what’s coming in 2021
Greetings,
In 2021, my focus will be on the thing that we still can’t seem to get right in this country because we won’t stop viewing it through the old lenses: healthcare.
The way a people practices and delivers medicine is inextricably linked to the government of said people. Our system is hierarchical, reductive, and focused on the bottom line. And we get exactly what you’d expect from such a system: profit from pain and suffering.
If we could dream a new dream, one that was practical, realistic, and certainly not more expensive, what might healthcare look like? I know people who have some very clear thoughts on that.
We’ll kick off the new year by talking with author, historian, and physician, Victoria Sweet, MD. Her books God’s Hotel and Slow Medicine have been widely praised for their eloquent and entertaining examination of how medicine has been divorced from both patient and physician largely due to the drive for profit. This might not surprise you, but how and why this has happened, and especially what we’ve lost along the way probably will.
Here are just a few: thinking of the body as not just a biological, atomic organism, but an elemental one, that can be tended by the physician like a gardener; time for a real therapeutic process to find its footing and grow strong so that a patient truly can heal; the role of fresh air and a beautiful view to gaze upon as actual therapeutic techniques once taken for granted as common sense and so was always incorporated into hospital design.
There is so much we don’t know about our true healthcare options – not just so-called alternative therapies, but how sickness used to be viewed and handled when it was seen as a human condition and not a profit center, no matter how it is spun. The cold fact is that our ignorance, as well as our pain, is what makes and keeps medicine profitable.
Which reminds me of another topic we’ll cover – the moral injury to physicians who are forced in the current system to put profit over patients.
And also…
We’ll also be looking at the potential spiritual and even metaphysical reasons for the growing number of transsexual people, and what their healthcare needs mean for all of us who use the system.
If psychedelic drugs turn out to be effective for depression, would that be scalable, among other questions I have about that growing field of medicine.
Also, what happens when nothing works to treat whatever “crazy” is tearing apart your family? There are a few bold women who bucked the system that told them they were the crazy ones and instead created what are now wholly validated therapeutic options. How and why did they do that?
And so many other healthcare topics you will not find being discussed in quite the same ways I discuss them here because I don’t give a fig about finding pharma ad dollars to underwrite what I do. That is why I can offer you time with medical experts who think and talk about far more than pharma-sponsored events will allow them to share.
Since healthcare is 20% of our GDP, I reckon at least 20% or thereabouts of my audience will be especially keen to hear what my line up of guests have to say about this, since whether we like thinking that pain is profitable, it is what pays the bills for one fifth of us. It’s important to establish that so we don’t go into this looking to point fingers.
Can’t wait! Please join me.
Whitney