Doug Dowd
Bologna, Italia
Dear friends,
A big hello, and some other stuff...
1. In my previous note I reported — correctly then — that I was no longer going to teach at the U. of Modena; that my teaching days were over. They changed their minds. I keep on next year. I am pleased.
2. In a separate message I am sending a new article of mine whose aim is to convince people like us that there is only one way that Obama’s best possibilities can become real. Our only chance is if there is an always stronger popular movement to overcome what is now an almost totally corrupted Congress (among other realms). We must stop wringing our hands and start seeing to it that those now in Congress go against their corrupters — or we’ll go against them. Thus, the election of 2010 is vital. I refer you to a recent article by Howard Zinn (The Progressive — “Changing Obama’s Mindset”).
3. I now attach a letter I wrote to the San Francisco Chronicle a while back, which, naturally, they did not publish.
Letter to the Editor
As an 89-year-old native San Franciscan who now lives in Bologna, Italy, I would like to offer a comparison between health care in the United States and Italy. My experience convinces me of the need for a strong governmental health care program, as put forth by President Obama.
In 1966, I was a professor of economic history at Cornell University when I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach in Bologna for a year. On the first day of my first week in Italy, while attending a professors’ meeting in Rome, my wife and I were hit by a car that ran a red light. We were hospitalized for several days, returned to Bologna for further care, and that was that. Cost: zero.
When I returned to teach in Bologna in the 1980s, after continuing my teaching career at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and San Jose State, I was again struck by a car and hospitalized. Cost: zero.
During my subsequent life in Italy, where I moved after my wife died and where I married my present Italian wife, I have been hospitalized several times — thankfully, not for any more confrontations with Italian drivers. Cost: zero.
As I aged, I did have to pay for always more medications. The costs were at least as high as in the United States, the equivalent of $200–$300 monthly. But that changed a few years ago (while continuing my U.S. citizenship and taxes) when I became an official resident of Bologna. I now have a little health card and a family doctor, who sends me to specialists when needed. My privileges are the same as the Italians. Cost: zero.
When I present pharmacists with my many prescriptions, they are filled. Cost: zero.
Meanwhile, as a U.S. citizen, I continue to pay what economists refer to as “health taxes” — health insurance premiums, Medicare and Medicaid taxes, etc. In the United States, we pay the world’s highest health taxes, and much of the money is squandered. The wealthy get tax breaks, and HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits at the taxpayers’ expense.
Americans have long been told that we have the “best health care system in the world” and taught to fear “socialized medicine” for its alleged absence of choice in personal physicians, long waiting lists for surgeries, etc. From my experience, such charges are absurd, ridiculous, and deceitful.
In short, we have allowed ourselves to be robbed, with substantial dangers to our health. President Obama needs our activie political support if health is to take the place of thievery.
/s/ Doug Dowd
* * *
My new article will be online soon,
Doug
(doug A T dougdowd D O T org)
