American know-how being what it is, the U.S. always tends to pitch in most aggressively on health treatment. We may not be the world's best at warding off illness or injuryà ‚¬"OSHA is consistently under-funded, understaffed, and under-utilized--but with our fix-it mentality, when we do get sick or injured those of us with access to medical care can get everything from laparoscopy to transplants. Professionals around the globe flock to U.S. medical schools, and both private and public entities finance medical research.
The national policy on health care--ordinary health maintenance --is somewhat more mixed and obscure. Although an ounce of prevention is universally recognized to be worth a pound of cure, preventive care--wellness, as our mostly defunct HMOs called it--is relegated largely to individual responsibility, excluding public attention to the many obstacles to individual health including those obstacles created by the marketplace. Since behavioral remedies are unquestionably required for health problems with behavioral causesà ‚¬"obesity and eating disorders, poor nutrition and exercise, substance abuse, tobacco use, high-risk sexual practices, aggression and violenceà ‚¬"subsidized information campaigns focus almost exclusively on abuses of health at the individual level. Federal public information campaigns have never adequately targeted environmental factors, dubious pharma, or abusive medical or insurance practices; it's always been up to you. Federal efforts even to reduce tobacco consumption have been mixed and contradictory, fluctuating with changes of administration.
Everyday health for the individual in this country depends partly on an ability to stand aside from an avalanche of advertising boosting over-consumption and sometimes harmful products. Having a little sophistication in regard to mass enculturation, whether one puts it that way or calls it enlightened skepticism, is key to survival and one benefit of the good upbringing presumably implied in à ‚¬Ëœvalues' campaigns. The essentials of proper nutrition and exercise were hammered by among others 2008 GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas (à ‚¬Ëœthe other candidate from Hope, Arkansas'), who made self-help health virtually a campaign plank. Even the television networks--somewhat ironically given their advertising base--have begun to focus on widespread obesity in America as a health epidemic. We are all well acquainted with abuses of health on the individual level.
But the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-Thigh-Master perspective has limitations. Death in childbirth, for example, and infant and child mortality do not stem solely from individual choices. Even while some federal public information campaigns have targeted environmental hazards such as lead paint and touted the benefits of breast-feeding, dubious practices posing larger health concerns have often gone unchallenged for years.
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