I apologize to my colleagues and readers (a few of you anyway!) for having been scarce these past weeks. I'll probably be scarce in the weeks to come as well, but will try to improve little by little. It's no secret that our sixth child was born on January 21, a boy, and that he was born with pulmonary hypertension which the doctors deemed life-threatening. He was hospitalized for a while, but his progress has been extraordinarily rapid and we were able to bring him home last week.
The experience of God in the birth of a child has become cliche, but we are simply overwhelmed with His mercy and the love bestowed upon us through family, friends, friends of friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers. Let me say, too, that I have a new respect for hospital social workers, who were immensely helpful to us, and for charitable groups like "Wings of Eagles" who were Johnny-on-the-spot with their support. Furthermore, the professional competence and dedication of the hospital pediatricians, as well as the NICU nurses, was a magnificent sight to behold. A “culture of life” still triumphs in these people, even in the midst of much tawdry political correctness. What marvelous work for anyone - but for a Christian especially - to embark upon.
As I often say, we Culbreaths are debtors, pure and simple, and at times like this we can do little more than soak in the abundance of God and the generosity of others. That is not to say there isn't a big bill behind it all. The baby's flight to Sacramento alone, which lasted about an hour, was billed at $28,000. Not including ambulance services to and from the airports.
As a person of (partially) sanguine temperament, I have a rather embarrassing tendency to over-commit to things. In the course of the past year I have made several promises with respect to W4: to review ISI's "Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny", which was given to me for that purpose; to review Newman's "The Idea of a University"; and to review Fr. Thomas Dubay’s “Happy Are You Poor”. The first review is daunting because there are so many interesting perspectives involved; the second is daunting because Newman doesn’t write in bumper sticker slogans, and I am, after all, a blogger; the third is daunting because I suspect that this book, while promulgating a much-needed and widely-ignored Christian message, is flawed in such a way as to detract from its primary purpose, and I’m not sure how to present or clarify this. My intention to review each of these books remains, but I beg your patience and may even require your forgiveness.
Comments (16)
Jeff, delightful news about little Theo! I am so glad everyone is home and pray that he will be a healthy little fellow from here on out!
Posted by Beth Impson | February 5, 2012 3:20 PM
Deo gratias!
Posted by T. Chan | February 5, 2012 5:11 PM
I've been following young Theo's progress at Stony Creek Digest and am so glad that things are still good for him. The word on the groups and people who have helped is also deeply worthwhile. It's good to think about what's right with the world there.
Jeff, speaking for myself, I would be interested in blog posts on what you're thinking about just now. They needn't be book reviews at all. :-)
Posted by Lydia | February 5, 2012 10:29 PM
Thank you, Beth!
Ted - I thought you would like the name. :-)
Lydia - Funny, when I'm in a "what's right with the world" mood I don't much feel like blogging. But that ought not to be.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | February 6, 2012 1:46 AM
With respect to health care, the whole experience was one of just being impressed with everything and everybody. But it was a necessarily passive experience without a lot of insight into how the sausage is made. The bills will be revealing. I'm guessing they're going to easily top $125K before it's all said and done. I'm trying to wrap my brain around what this might say about our health care system. Certainly there is still an intense, pull-out-all-the-stops ethic of saving lives - at least with respect to newborns - which is a very good thing. Without the treatment Theodore received, only 50% of babies diagnosed with his condition survive. With modern treatment the odds become 4 out of 5. The $28K emergency flight expense raises lots of questions. I suspect a good chunk of that pays for liability insurance at various levels.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | February 6, 2012 2:01 AM
Jeff:
Maybe the excellent medical care available in the US pulled your baby through, and it's great to hear that he's doing well now.
As someone who has grown up with a 'free at the point of delivery system' of health care, I'm horrified by the size of the bills that you will have to pay. $125000 seems like a heck of a lot of money - at least to me.
Naturally, you'd spend your last penny to save your child's life. But on the matter of principle, isn't there a better way than simply the choice between a so-called 'free' system like the British NHS - which is routinely abused - and the American nightmare of ruinous doctors' bills?
Posted by Alex | February 6, 2012 3:42 AM
Alex, we do have health insurance, provided through my wife's employer, so our out-of-pocket expenses should be no more than $4,000. (I'm an independent contractor and her employer's insurance is much cheaper than mine would be.) In the U.S. hospitals generally perform whatever service is necessary, regardless of the patient's ability to pay, and worry about the bills later. The uninsured are usually just covered by the hospital for whatever amount they are unable to pay.
Nevertheless I do agree with you: it is obvious that health care needs reform in this country. Costs are out of control and the insurance system has a lot to do with it. I'm glad that anyone's baby, insured or uninsured, would have received the same treatment ours did and I want to see that continue. But the present arrangement seems unsustainable.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | February 6, 2012 4:17 AM
God bless the child.
Posted by Mark Butterworth | February 6, 2012 6:59 AM
Jeff,
Would be interested on your take of the Fr. Dubay book. I haven't read it yet, but it has been recommended to me several time.
But take your time. Things are busy for you now. I miss having a little one in the house.
Jim
Posted by Jim Curley | February 6, 2012 1:13 PM
The ruinous bills are caused by a perverse combination of the two. You have a partially funded mandate in EMTALA which requires hospitals that take Medicare or Medicaid funds to cover literally every indigent that comes in their emergency room. And of course, the states and federal government don't actually pay 100% of the costs this creates. They have their own price schedules which they think are fair. This from a national government which cheerfully leaves out the cost of energy and food from its official inflation index.
So what we have is a system where health care providers have to take everyone or lose a few critical revenue streams, then when the government won't pay the full cost, it gets to cost-shift to families like Jeff's.
See, that's what Jeff leaves out when he lays the blame primarily on the insurance industry. EMTALA being a serious problem doesn't square with his view of economics and the practical limits they place on implementing Catholic social policy.
Posted by Mike T | February 6, 2012 2:21 PM
Alex,
This is a good example of how absolutely corrupt many parts of our government are at the state and local level (where much of the reform needs to come from). It's why many of us won't even consider more government involvement.
Jeff,
Congrats on your son's recovery.
Posted by Mike T | February 6, 2012 2:42 PM
An ordinary not-too-fancy private jet used for business travel can easily run $15,000 an hour. That includes fuel, crew, actual depreciation and approximated maintenance cost, and some degree of gross profit for the jet-leasing company, but not a big fat obscene profiteering amount of money.
I imagine that converting a business-class jet into an airborne ambulance could eat up a lot of the difference between $15k and $28k.
Not to defend thirty thousand bucks for an hour-long flight, but to suggest that the shockingly large number might not be prima facie evidence of price gouging.
I'd like to see the Dubay review too. I took a class with him a few years back, more of a retreat for religious disguised as a college-credit course. The worst thing I could say about him is that he mentioned Mozart a lot, and always pronounced the 'z' as though it were an English, not a German, consonant. But the course/retreat was based on his Fire Within, and served as a lovely introduction of the Carmelite tradition to a brand-new Catholic.
Posted by David Brandt | February 6, 2012 3:49 PM
David, I know about the book only what I see on Amazon, but if even Jeff C. says it's flawed, I can't help thinking you, with your clear (and by me, at least, much appreciated) free-market ideas expressed on other threads, are unlikely to agree with it. That, however, is just a guess. I could be completely wrong.
Posted by Lydia | February 6, 2012 4:23 PM
I followed your link and glanced through the salaries paid to teachers, firefighters and the police etc., in the state of Illinois.
I was astonished to discover that a patrol officer, which I assume is the lowest rank in the police, can make $135000 a year. That's about £85000 - i.e. a bit more than the basic pay of a Chief Superintendent in the UK.
However, the trend in Britain (as in the United States, apparently) is for employees in the public services to receive much better pay and pensions than people employed in the private sector.
How long this can go on without a taxpayer's rebellion is anyone's guess. Changing the government makes no difference to the consensus on what public servants ought to be paid. (Though recently an attempt was made to reduce the amount of overtime claimed by the police.) Since a huge number of people are clients of the state in the UK and will vote for the status quo, it seems unlikely that the taxpayer's burden will be reduced any time soon.
Posted by Alex | February 7, 2012 6:41 AM
Jeff, congrats on bringing Theodore home. Hope you can get some sleep here and there.
Alex, your point is interesting. I think that the 135,000 figure is with a LOT of overtime, at a guess running at least 60 hours a week. Although I don't begrudge properly behaved police a good wage, one wonders whether they have created a self-sustaining monster, having a vested interest in there being sufficient active criminal population so as to demand ever more police service.
Police service, as with most basic government service, is essentially a leach on society's total wealth: usually you feed government only because NOT doing so ends up eating even MORE of your resources in mopping up messes, not because government is intrinsically productive of wealth. With police, not hiring them leaves criminals free to eat away your substance with robbery and other methods of detaching you from what is yours. The more threat of robbery, the more you need protection, the more you pay for protection, the less you have left over, the less you have something that needs protecting: a vicious fiscal-feedback mechanism that peters out when the police, robbers, and citizens all have the same amount. But only one of the three produced any wealth, the other two just live off it.
Posted by Tony | February 7, 2012 10:02 PM
At 20 hours of overtime a week, that comes out to a base salary of $90k. That's good money, even in an expensive city like DC, NYC or Chicago. Another problem that that salary plus overtime creates is that you could hire a fourth officer using the money spent on the overtime for three normal patrolmen. The problem you cite at the end there is why we need to shutdown the ATF and DEA and merge their operational components with other agencies with broader mandates like ICE and the FBI.
One of the reasons policing has become so expensive is that we've all but destroyed the posse comitatus. We could greatly reduce law enforcement costs by restoring private law enforcement mechanisms like citizen's arrest.
Posted by Mike T | February 8, 2012 7:43 AM