Robin Hoodwinking

I felt good today after my Health in Africa seminar, which is I think the first time I have since the semester began. Honestly, to begin with I didn't have much of an interest in the subject, at least the way other people seem to. By that I mean, I don't have an activist do-gooder spirit burning in me.

This isn't to say I'm a lump of ambivalence, but when I get excited about things it's more because I like the fight, I like the excitement, I like telling people to sit down and shut up if they need to hear it. One too many girl power songs in junior high perhaps.

The class, however, has gotten me interested in the topics of public health, of great inequality, in what seems to be the white man's new burden of sopping up the blood spilt by our predecessors. Mostly, though, with how we are doing a great job of continuing to fuck things up.

Originally, the class angered me. I was annoyed with this effervescent do-right idealism that, while nice to see, didn't seem to be dealing with the world in a realistic way. I started bringing this up in discussion, that many of my classmates' suggestions were band-aids on a gaping wound, that doling out food and teaching people to read is not going to solve root problems in a country with 86% unemployment. Basically, I went into lunatic rants, presenting myself like a fifteen-year-old who just read The Communist Manifesto for the first time. I would leave class embarrassed, and frustrated now more with myself and the world than with my well-meaning classmates.

Eventually, class discussion caught up with my garbled attempts to verbalize my irritations. We've been talking about the need for infrastructure, the (im?)possibility of gentle capitalism or plans where the inevitable 'bleeding period' (just now realizing the menstrual pun... we are 12 girls and 1 boy in the class after all) towards building an economy actually results in a better place for everyone.

The problem, of course, is that we are all anthropologists with maybe two semesters of economics between us. Much of this is quite mysterious and difficult. Nevertheless, I feel like we've stumbled upon something quite beautiful today. We were talking about nationalized healthcare, and how to get the rich to jump on board.

Claire, our professor, helped demystify a rather dense article we had read. In the end, she said, one successful way to keep nationalized health care going is to let the rich get the most out of the system. They like their place in the upper echelons. They don't like having to be kicked down to a common level, so give them what they want. Institute a system where they are maybe providing most of the burden, but they are also getting the best care. Let inequalities buoy the system rather than keeping it from emerging.

Naturally, half of my sweet classmates balked at the cynical break from idealism that the plan represents. Once again, the poor getting are the short end of the stick. But really, we've got to start somewhere. Little healthcare is better than none.

Realistically, I'm not sure how this could play out in America. The rich are already getting fabulous access to the best healthcare in the world because they can afford it, and the poor are already getting paltry access to okay healthcare when they can afford it. We sort of have this thing going already. And I obviously didn't get the sort of economics background that would make the plan understandable by learning about prehistoric Europe and australopithecines for three years.

Still, I like this idea. I like what Bill Gates has called "creative capitalism," a delightful euphemism for tricking the rich into contributing to social causes through their purchases. It's the first suggestion for social ills that has put a smile on my face all semester. I didn't stomp home angrily in step to The White Stripes this evening. I sat down to blog, delighting in the thought that someday my parents' purchase of ostentatious RVs could, somehow, fill the cavities in my health insurance-less roommate's teeth.