Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

I write letters

Dear Honorable Senator,

I am writing to encourage you to protect meaningful health care reform by protecting the public option and women’s access to reproductive health services. In order to be meaningful, the public option must be available to everyone, even if their employers offer health insurance. I would chose government-run health care and would like the right to do so no matter what my employment situation.

I’m alarmed about the abortion amendment tacked on to the house version of the bill. I hope that the senate is able to protect women’s rights to access abortion.

Thank you for your leadership on health issues.

Sincerely,
C Hutchins

TuningLib

Yesterday, I added a new Quark to Supercollider, called TuningLib. It requires a recent version of MathLib, one with the Bessel.sc file included. There are several classes in the new Quark, all realted to tuning.

Stuff from Jascha

Scala – This class is based on the SCL class from Jascha Narveson, but updated so it’s a subclass of the newer Tuning class. It opens Scala Files, which means you can use the large and interesting scala file library of thousands of tunings.
Key – Jascha’s SCL file also did a bunch of other interesting tuning-related things that the newer Tuning class does not, so I put these features in Key. It tracks your key changes and can interpolate between a given frequency or tuning ratio and the current active Scale.

Dissonance Curves

DissonanceCurve – is, I think, the most interesting part of the TuningLib. It generates Tunings, on the fly, for a given timbre. Give it your spectrum as lists of frequencies and amplitudes, or as a FFT buffer or as the specs for an FM tone, and it makes two different scales.
The first kind of scale it makes is the sort described by Bill Sethares. If you want to see the generated curve, you can plot it. Or you can get a Tuning from it. Or, you can get a scale made up of the n most consonant Tuning ratios. This is used in the second section of my piece Blakes 9
The other sort of tuning it does is based on a similar idea, but using the classic Just Intonation notions of consonance. Like with Sethares’ algorithm, every partial of a timbre’s spectrum is compared against every partial of the proposed tuning. It calculates the ratio between the frequencies. This could be 3/2, for example, or 115/114 or any whole number ratio. The numerator and denominator of that ratio are summed. In just intonation, smaller numbers are considered more consonant, so the smaller the sum, the more consonant the ratio. (This sum is related to Clarence Barlow‘s ideas of ‘digestibility.’) Then, the resultant sum is scaled by the amplitude of the quieter of the two partials. So if they are 3/2 and one has an amplitude of 0.2 and the other of 0.1, the result will be 0.5 ( = (3 + 2) * 0.1). This process repeats for every partial, and the results for each are summed, giving the level of dissonance (or digestibility) of the proposed tuning.
After computing the relative dissonance of all 1200 possible tunings in an octave, the next step is to figure out which ones to select as members of a scale. For this, the algorithm uses a moving window of n potential tunings. For a given tuning, if it is the most consonant of the n/2 tunings below it and the n/2 tunings above it, then it gets added to the Tuning returned by digestibleTuning.
I don’t have any sound examples for this usage yet, but I’m working on some. I don’t know of any pieces by anybody else using this algorithm either, but I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of it. If you know of any prior work using this idea, please leave a comment.

Tuning Tables

Lattice – This is based on some tuning methods that Ellen Fullman showed me a few years ago. Based on the numbers you feed it, which should be an array of 2 and then odd numbers, it generates a tuning table. for [2, 5, 3, 7, 9], it creates:

 1/1  5/4  3/2  7/4  9/8
 8/5  1/1  6/5  7/5  9/5
 4/3  5/3  1/1  7/6  3/2
 8/7  10/7 12/7 1/1  9/7
 16/9 10/9 4/3  14/9 1/1

You can use this class to navigate around in your generated table. For otonality, adjacent fractions are horizontal neighbors, so they share a denominator. For utonality, neighbors are on the vertical axis, so they have the same numerator. Three neighboring ratios make up a triad. You can walk around the table, so that you’re playing a triad, and then pick a member f that triad to be a pivot. Then, create a new triad on the other axis that contains your pivot as one of the members.
For example, one possible walk around the table, starting at 0,0 would be [1/1, 5/4, 3/2], [5/4, 1/1, 5/3], [3/2, 4/3, 5/3], [8/5, 4/3, 8/7], [8/7, 9/7, 1/1] etc. As you can (hopefully) see, the table wraps around at the edges.
I’ve done several pieces using this class, usually initializing it with odd numbers up to 21. Two examples are Beep and Bell Tolls

Undocumented

There is also a class FMSpectrum that will compute the spectrum for a FM tone if given the carrier frequency, the modulation frequency and depth (in Hz). I would like to also add in a class to calculate the spectrum of phase-modulated signals, but I don’t have the formula for this. If you know it (or where to find it), leave a comment!

Gay Marriage Fails in Maine

“If you put it up to the vote of the people, we’d have slavery again.” —Jesse Ventura on CNN, 11/3/2009
I don’t much care for Ventura, but he has a point here. Most civil rights protections in the states have been expanded via case law, not by the ballot box. In fact, I think the whole concept of civil rights is at odds with voting on them. The idea is to protect minorities from majorities. When we say something is a civil right, we take an abstraction of principles that we mostly all agree on and then apply them to the specific. Most Americans think freedom of religion is a pretty good idea, so that must also apply to Mormons and Muslims and Pagans. Our agreed-upon principles lead us to protect actions and people who would not necessarily receive such protections if things were put up for a vote.
Interracial marriage became legal with the court case Loving v Virginia, decided by the Supreme Court. This decision was not popular, but it wasn’t unpopular enough to amend the Constitution over. If it had been put up for a vote even five years after it became law, it would not have passed. Honestly, I would be worried about what people would vote on this even now. In that decision, the court found that marriage was a fundamental right, something I think we all agree upon. And we’re all supposed to be equal under the law. And there’s not a compelling state interest to keep people of different races from marrying. Therefore, it must be allowed.
The SCOTUS needs to rule on gay marriage. This is not a battle that’s going to be won by voting. It needs to be a combination of activism and case law. That winning combination is what desegregated buses and then later protected our speech. March and sue!
Eventually, gay rights will be a settled question, but right now, it’s still legal to discriminate in several states and on a federal level. We don’t have ENDA (nor have we been added to the Civil Right Act, which would give us full protections. Even after we have ENDA, we won’t be done.). We can’t serve openly in the military. Hate crime legislation is less than a month old. It’s not surprising that people feel comfortable discriminating against us in the ballot box, when they’re fully allowed to in other contexts. Indeed, these other contexts are somewhat more vital for many LGBT people. I’m certainly in favor of Same Sex Marriage, but even more, I’m in favor of not being fired from a job for being trans.
I think there’s more resources going towards marriage right now, and that might be because people who have enough resources to pay for political campaigns are not worried about losing their jobs. There are people who are still in the closet at work, who are afraid to come out or to transition. If they get fired for being LGBT, they have no recourse and they can kiss their health insurance goodbye. A legally recognized marriage is not the top agenda for people in that situation and I don’t know if it should be top agenda for the LGBT community in general. Let’s pass the gender-inclusive ENDA, make it clear that discrimination being wrong is a matter of law and then sue for marriage. Or hell, let’s sue to get rid of having legal sexes at all, then we’ll get marriage by default.

Terre Thaemlitz says

When I look at members of the transsexual community who are actively seeking out physical alteration of their bodies… on the one hand, of course, I have this anti-essentialist reaction against it – that it’s about transforming bodies towards something that is, in the end, I think, conservative. But on the other hand, I do have this envy of their body transformations, which I feel are beyond my capacity. And part of that is because of the mythology in the media about the beautiful, successful transsexual. Because that’s who you see in the media. You don’t see the people who got totally fucked up, and look totally fucked up – which I would say are the majority.
— The Laurence Rassel Show “On Transgendered Authorship”

Terre Thaemlitz thinks that “the majority” of transsexuals “look totally fucked up.” And published an mp3 saying so. Why should we care what this Julie Bindel-wannabe thinks about trans people? Because Thaemlitz is one of two serious composers that I know of who are out as trans.
Yes, he says, “I’m a transgendered identified male (both my transgenderism and maleness are documented in different public spheres)” (http://www.chaindlk.com/interviews/index.php?interview=TerreThaemlitz) No, that doesn’t mean that he’s ftm. He’s a very subversive guy who dresses up like a woman sometimes in order to fight patriarchy. Or something. I’m not being terribly respectful of his identity in that description, but I’m afraid I’m infuriated by his failure to respect mine.
And terribly, terribly disappointed. I wrote about this guy in MA thesis and thought he was awesome, especially since he was not only out as trans, but tackling trans issues head-on through his work. He would show up to very technology-based music institutions in Germany and give lectures that were full of gender theory. He, like me, wants cis people to have to think about gender sometimes and how it’s constructed. Heck, the purpose of this project I’ve quoted from is purportedly, to “[deal] with issues of authorship and copy-left from feminist and transgendered perspectives.” (Ibid) But for him, despite using a plural form on “perspectives,” I guess there’s only one legitimate gender position and that’s his. People who transitioning are “reactionarily conservative,” passive victims of the “medical industry” He says, “The transsexual community that focuses on transitioning the body . . . in the end, it’s capitulatory.” (“On Transgendered Authorship”)
He says, authoritatively, as a cissexual,

For me, transgenderism arises out of the problem of not fitting in. and it comes out of those crisis – not only a gender crisis, but a larger crisis of social relations. It’s not so much a crisis of the body, which Gender Identity Disorder and the medical industry want to present it as being about.(Ibid)

It’s really great for him that he’s never experienced dysphoria. But he goes from “I’ve never experienced dysphoria,” to “therefore it must not exist.” Well, a lot of men have never experienced any kind of trans identity. So if bloke A has never experienced wanting to cross dress, does that mean that it also doesn’t exist as a valid perspective?
A big part of Thamelitz’s problem is that he sees trans a a radikewl thing to do. A way to challenge patriarchy. Alas for him, my goal is not to “[indtroduce] a new breed of masculinity into the male workplace, into the male social structure.” (ibid) Heck, I don’t think my masculinity is especially new or in any way subversive. Indeed, I object even to the idea of “the male workplace.” Alas, the gender balance of some workplaces is not ideal, but I can’t imagine terming any place the male workplace. What kind of feminism and transgenderism in this, pushed forward by a male-identified man? I’m starting to think he doesn’t actually understand what these words mean.
The piece I really loved from him before dealt with problems faced by intersexed people, who were often forced into surgery as babies, which was treated as an emergency when it was not at all life-threatening, just a social crisis. But now I fear he doesn’t see IS people as people, just as symbols of non-gender essentialism. Living examples to prove his theory. The ultimate gender queers. And I wonder why he feels like he has to exploit trans identities and IS identities to prove his point.
This is profoundly disappointing and an example of how divisions can be sewn among trans people. If there are multiple perspectives, one of them must be wrong, because I can be the only right one. And in his case, it’s not enough that he be the only true transperson, he has to fall into a load of transphobic, sexist, and transmysoginist language. Does he really think he isn’t just repeating a tired old trope when he says that transwomen are ugly? Trust me, this idea has been well circulated previously. It’s tiresome, untrue and sexist as hell. Judging women by their appearance is not feminist. Maybe the reason the German government backed out of broadcasting this is not because feminism is not “sexy” (http://www.chaindlk.com/interviews/index.php?interview=TerreThaemlitz) but because he’s failing at it.
Terre Thaemlitz, I used to think you were cool.

Who’s Streets?

I found a call for recordings for a politically themed musical thing, which always makes me happy because this sort of thing motivates me a lot. It’s got an item for consideration, “How do we view the fact that our instruments for organising sounds are linked to instruments designed to control? Is there a relationship between organising and controlling?” (the whole thing is at http://www.sonoscop.net/pop-up/convzepp09ENG.html)

So I was thinking I could use some recordings I made of people chanting at the G20 protests in London and then juxtapose that with recordings of military chants that I could steal from YouTube.

And I am astounded, perplexed and unnerved that pretty much, crowds watching troop drills sound exactly like crowds at protests with chanting. I would not be able to listen to a recording and know if I’m watching an implicitly normative crowd cheering for marching at a football game or a bunch of leftists out to reclaim the streets. (I mean, the words are different, but playing recordings for a non-english speaking audience looses that signifier.)

This is kind of worrying because it suggests that there’s not so much difference between how these positions are articulated or perhaps even between the positions themselves as they manifest in a public space.
Which manifestations are empowering and which are alarming would only seem to have to do with whether your own advantage is the one being promoted. Of course, I think there’s more to it than that. Are we supporting the rights of people who already have power or people who do not? But this suggests that both positions might fill the same needs for observers and participants. And somehow that’s disturbing me. Maybe people are more empowered by being reactionary. How can we reach out to them in that case?
Speaking of protests, there’s one today about biofuels and I don’t know whether or not I want to go. Burning acres of rainforest to grow soybeans for fuel has a worse carbon footprint than burning a whole lot of petrol. Is there a role for non-waste oil biodiesel in a green, sustainable model for fuel? I don’t know. I really believed in biodiesel.

Writing my godparents

This is a draft of the email I’m planning on sending to my godmother and her husband:

Dear M and K,
When I saw you last week, you might have noticed that I look kind of different and that I’m going by a different name. I began transitioning from female to male in December of 2007 and since that time I’ve felt much happier and at ease with my self. Because I’ve been abroad so much and because it’s kind of a difficult conversation, I have put off telling people who are important to me, like yourselves.
Last December, I went to see Chuck, thinking I should tell him that I was planning on changing my first name to Charles, but it seemed awkward and I didn’t bring it up. I don’t know how he would have reacted at first and I thought I had more time and could bring it up later.
I should not wait to tell the people I love about something this important. I’m changing my first name to Charles and making Celeste my middle name. I’m asking people to call me “Les,” but “Charles” is also ok. I’m also asking people to use “he, him, his” etc when referring to me.
If you have questions, I can try to answer them, but a lot of things are difficult for me to explain. However, a writer named Jennifer Finney Boyland has written her memoirs about transitioning in the other direction, and, while it’s her story and not mine, she explains things better than I think I could. The book is called “She’s Not There.” Also, PFLAG has information for family and friends of transgender people: http://community.pflag.org/Page.aspx?pid=380.
I don’t think I’ll be back in the south bay before I fly back to England on the 16th, but I will be back in California for a bit around Christmas. It would be good to see you then.
Love,
Les

I realized I was kind of avoiding them, despite them having been part of my life since I was born. I was ok to go to a post-funeral dinner with a jerk that I hate, but I was shunning people that I love. Life is too short to be stupid like that.

Uncle Chuck

My uncle died. He was 74. The last time I saw him, in December, he was recovering from a hernia operation and didn’t look well. But I’d heard he had made a full recovery and was up and around and doing fine. His death was totally unexpected.
I’ve been back in California a few days. I thought that I would be helping out with the arrangements, but they were all made by the time I landed. So I’ve been visiting with my friends. I did, however, email the priest to get in contact with the church pianist for the funeral.
The pianist explained that people usually want sort of upbeat music because they’re celebrating the life of the deceased instead of mourning their loss. I wonder if I’m the only person in America who thinks that’s insane. I mean, I know there are TV ads for zoloft and whatever that say that a passing blue mood should be medicated away, but have we so rejected sadness that grief is now banished from funerals?
I asked for something in a minor key. He said he would do reflective music.
Ok, I guess Four Walls by John Cage with it’s stark depression might be a bit too much. And anyway, I doubt he knows it. I’ve been thinking for a while, that I should write some funeral music for organ. It’s very unusual for a Catholic church to have a piano instead. So I would have been unprepared regardless.
. . .
I wanted to ask my uncle about my great aunt Tessie. All I know about her was that she was a musician and a piano teacher and she never married. Where did she live and who did she live with? There’s nobody left alive that knows. My mother’s entire side of the family is dead. On my dad’s side, there is only my dad. Everybody is gone.
I wanted to talk to my uncle about changing my name. My younger brother has my father’s name. I thought maybe my parents would have named a second son from my mother’s side. Charles was the first name of my great grandfather and the middle name of my grandfather and the first name of my uncle. And it’s better than Otis, which is the other name traversing generations on that side.
When I saw my uncle last time, I was going to bring this up. But he wasn’t much of a talker. There was a kind of awkwardness between him and I that started when I was a teenager. I didn’t know how to bring it up, so I asked him about the garage that he just built and his test equipment. He was an engineer for HP and had a bunch of old oscilloscopes and oscillators and other testing gear. Then he showed me all of his race cars and talked about how much work he had put into them and how much they were worth. He showed me my mother’s bike, which he had repaired and was riding around town for short trips.
then his friend came over and he introduced me as his niece. It was an awkward moment. I had met the friend before. He started at me hard. I did not look or sound like a niece. My dad told me that he had told Chuck about me changing gender, but I don’t know how my dad would explain that or what my uncle would have heard. And he was clearly unsteady from having had an operation and so I didn’t say anything that would have made him look confused to his friend, nor did I correct him, I just inwardly squirmed.
So I did not talk to my uncle about his name. Nor have I talked to my family about it. I just started using it. I’ve performed with it twice and I use it with my email account. When I emailed the priest, that’s the name he saw for me and when the church pianist called, that’s what he called me. I need to say something about this to at least my brother and father before the service.
I feel like I’m doing this wrong.
All of it. I feel like I’m doing the name thing wrong. And I feel like I’m doing the mourning thing wrong. Sad music at the funeral will bum everybody out, since they all want a party or something. And despite my strange demands for somberness, I’m off hanging out with my friends. I spent a couple of nights with Mitch and went to a farmer’s market and had coffee with other people and biked from Sunnyvale to Cupertino (twice) and through the Santa Cruz mountains to Saratoga and Los Gatos and back to Sunnyvale and then had a BBQ. And I was thinking I’m using my uncle’s death as an excuse for a BBQ, what the fuck is wrong with me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
And why the hell didn’t I know him better? When I sent to see him in December, I was full of dread because of gender stuff. My dad had to order me to go, because I was so caught up in myself. I didn’t want to tell him and I couldn’t not tell him. I went and it was ok, but it was awkward and I thought that I would just give it time.
time
My uncle wasn’t married and he never talked about his personal life. He talked about cars and computers. For a while, I thought he might be in the closet about something, because that’s what we do in the closet. But now I think he wasn’t. I think that’s just how he was. He made his life more about his activities and his friends than about his family. Which is also a bit like what being queer is about. Chosen family because blood family wouldn’t understand this stuff. We surround ourselves with friends who do get what we’re about and build stuff around them. And I do that too and that’s a good thing to do. I just wish he had reached out more to me and I wish I knew him more. And I wish I had reached out to him. And the obvious lesson from this is that I need tot talk to my family about my life and make sure they’re part of it.
I worshipped my uncle when I was a kid. He was a race car driver! And so smart and funny. And then, a distance. And then he’s gone.

Gig Report: Worcester Music Festival

On Friday afternoon, Ash Surrey of Danse Macabre and her partner came and picked up me and Hoops of Helen’s Evil Twin. We set off for the Worcester Music Festival where both our bands played gigs. Worcester is in the Midlands, somewhere near Birmingham. The rural area around it, the shire, is, of course Worcestershire, and is the region where Worcestershire sauce originates. Alas, it usually contains anchovies, so I did not eat any of it while away.
Anyway, Friday afternoon traffic on the M25 is a drag and we arrived in the evening and met up with the remaining members of HET and Danse Macabre. They came separately in a 70’s-era VW minibus, which apparently has been on many music tours. The van is affectionately known as Camper van Helsing, a joke that never stops being funny.
After checking in to the Travel Lodge, we went out to drink and catch some live music. The festival organizers went to just about every bar and café in central Worcester and asked them if they would host live musicians for three days and not charge admission. Every event was free and there were many participating venues. The one we went to was the one HET was to play the following night, the Marr’s Bar. On Friday night, the BBC was there broadcasting live. They had a big canvas BBC banner on the wall behind the stage, ringed by fairy lights and posters up explaining that this was all live on the radio.
One guy that was playing was Nigel Clark, a Brummie who was a member of the 90’s pop band Dodgy. They were very popular in the UK, but I don’t think I’d heard of them in the states. He was quite good. I like his music a lot and his stage chatter was also very entertaining. He explained he was going to leave the curse words out of one of his songs due to the radio broadcast. And on one of his songs, during the intro he said that all the home listeners would be wondering why so many people in the bar were talking while he was playing (the background chatter level was kind of typical for a bar) and he improvised a verse about not talking during the performance. The room fell very quiet. It was nicely done.
I was really excited about the BBC being there, but they only do live broadcasts on Friday nights and would not be back for our gig, alas. After the music was over, we went back to the hotel and got drunk and then started horsing around with ukuleles and other instruments until about 2 AM. I felt kind of guilty about this, but I think that we didn’t keep anybody else awake. I hope.
We woke up kind of late Saturday morning and after breakfast went to Danse Macabre’s venue. They’re a goth band. Their drummer is Helen of HET and they have the same violinist as HET, but their own bassist and lead singer. The lead singer put on black renaisance faire trousers and ruffly white shirt and a black jacket and top hat and a lot of skull-related jewelry, including a large, sparkly skull belt buckle. She put on black lipstick and all that. Watching her transform from slightly eccentric street clothes to goth was kind of amazing.
They played some songs from their album “The Golden Age of Ballooning” and a song about Worcestershire sauce, which included such facts as the inventor of it and the typical ingredients. And they played some songs from a rock opera about evil squirrels. The subject matter was very eclectic.
We hung around for one more act, which was Smiley Mic, a guy with some looping pedals, making pop music by looping himself. He was was musically very good, but his lyrics all tended to be about how he was one guy laying down loops. Then we went to Marr’s Bar for HET’s sound check.
The bar has a really good stage, a great PA and a good sound guy. I had my own monitor speaker. We did the sound check and it was amazing because we could actually hear each other, which is not something that happens often on stage. I was kind of nervous, but we were on second and so the audience was people who came with us and other bands waiting to sound check and that was it. The first guy was on for maybe 10 minutes and was really good. I had a bunch of mistakes when we actually played and didn’t feel good about it, but the rest of the band was very happy. While I was putting my bass away, a bloke from the audience approached Helen and started talking enthusiastically about how great we were. I guess it doesn’t matter that I forgot the bassline to our song summarizing Jane Eyre?
I caught another band, who was also very cool and then left to get some food and then put my bass back into the hotel and caught the last few bands of the evening, on 4 and 5 hours after we started. The crowd had grown a lot. The last band, And What Will Be Left of Them, was playing their last-ever gig and they and the audience were both getting kind of emotional about it. Understandable as they were really good. Actually, all of the Worcester and Midlands-based bands on were really good. Really fun, really musically strong. Worcester is cool.
So I was highly impressed by the Worcester music scene. I suspect we will play there again and will probably also play in Birmingham and Manchester around December and January when we expect to be selling our album. Anybody who wants a rock band to play a show and then kip in their house around that time is highly encouraged to leave a comment or drop a line, because free lodging really helps with the going-into-debit thing that can be a downside of touring.
On Sunday, we headed back into London. I arrived at my flat in the afternoon, too burnt to do much but veg out. I’m quite enjoying the rock and roll life style, but my next major task needs to be to really really memorize the nine songs on our set list. I’ve got them, but not as solidly not-having-to-think-about-it as I’d like. And then, our set list should grow longer as things get recorded. Also, some of the songs could use better basslines, which requires time and thought and stuff, something I should be able to manage before our next gig on the 25 of September in Whitechapel.
Synthesizer
My personal next gig is not with the rock band, but is a noise music thing coming up on Wednesday at the Foundry in London. I’ll be playing my synthesizer. Starts at 7pm. I don’t know what time I’ll be on, but it’s free. In the basement.

Write your congress person

The public option is a compromise, and not a very good one. But access to health care is a moral issue and we have to do whatever we can to make sure that everybody has access. We can pass a compromise now and fix the rest of it later.
Howard Dean has a list of how everybody in congress has indicated they’re going to vote on health reform. The number of people who “don’t know” if they support a public option is high enough to swing it either way.
Feinstein is on the list of “don’t know”s, so I used her web form to send her a letter.

Dear Honorable Senator Feinstein,

I would like to encourage you to support a public option for health care reform. Any bill which does not include this option is not real reform. I voted for Obama partly because of his promises on this issue.

I vote absentee in California, but I’m studying overseas in England. The NHS is a fantastic system and we would be doing well to recreate it in the states. A public option is a compromise and not the best one. Failure to support even that is not just a political failure, it’s a moral failure. I’m sure that I don’t need to remind you of the alarmingly high number of uninsured children in California. They are counting on you to support a real reform, with at least a public option.

Thank you for your time,

C. Hutchins

It’s probably also worthwhile to write congress people who support it and thank them.

Rationing Health Care

As you know, I’m an American living in the UK and I’ve had a few health issues and have dealt with the NHS some. But I want to talk about how my mom got sick a few years ago.
She had been having a few problems and went to her GP for help, but the GP didn’t correctly figure out what the problem was. A week or so later, when she was suddenly partly paralyzed, my dad took her to the hospital, where first they thought she had a stroke and later they diagnosed her with a brain tumor. There was a national holiday, which delayed things for a bit, and then she had emergency brain surgery.
After the surgery, she needed to talk to some specialists about followup care and so had to wait to get on their calendars, despite needing care fairly immediately. They were on summer holidays. It took so long to see them that time was running out to actually start treatment.
Everything I’ve described so far could have happened in any first world country. The next part of it is uniquely American.
If you have a brain tumor, there is a very typical path through treating it. First surgery, then radiation + chemotherapy. Almost everyone does those things. But when it came time to start radiation, my mom’s insurance said no. That would not have happened under the NHS. The NHS would have covered it and she would have been able to start radiation within a reasonable time frame. Instead, my dad had to have a lawyer write a letter to the insurance company. While at the same time trying to cope with his wife having terrible cancer. So he approached Stanford Hospital to see if he could just pay cash. They said no. That also would not have happened in the UK. If my mom had been in the UK, she might have lived longer than the few weeks it took her to die, after she finally started radiation too late.
When I hear of people talking about how having national health in the states would cause delays in treatment or rationing of care, I wonder what planet they’re on. I’ve read that insurance companies spend 30% of their budget looking for ways to say no. In the UK, the NHS just follows standard treatment models. The doctor prescribes a treatment and the patient gets it. There is not an accountant involved in this process.
I have waited to see specialists in England. Sometimes months. But my issues are not life threatening. And I can see a GP usually the next day. In the US, I’ve been told I had to wait several weeks for a normal checkup. When I tried to get a gyno exam, the waiting list for that was six months. For a normal checkup. The NHS is faster and more efficient.
And, in the UK, if I decided for some reason that I wanted to see a private doctor or I wanted a prescription that they weren’t too keen to pay for (like the topical form of testosterone, for example) or I just thought it would be faster to go private, I could do that. Unlike my dad and Stanford Hospital, which only knew how to deal with insurance companies.
The US has the most expensive health care in the world. Per person, we pay more than anybody else in the world for our health system, which ranks at the very bottom of the first world. We pay twice as much as the NHS costs and we’re not getting better treatment, we’re getting worse.
So if the proposal for health reform in the States was to put in an American NHS, I say go for it. They’ve done fine by me and most everyone I know here. People in the UK don’t need to declare bankruptcy to pay medical bills. They’re astounded that we do. It’s responsible for half of all bankruptcies in the US. Here, like none. When people are hit by a car or something, they’re worried about getting better and getting back to work to pay their regular bills, not how they’re going to pay their medical bills. And we’re already paying twice as much as Brits for our system.
But just about everybody I know in the states has had some sort of issue with medical bills or insurance or something. Paying well over a hundred dollars just for a normal doctor visit or having to wait forever or being declined. Can we all take a moment and share those stories. Because the “rationing” fears I’m hearing from the states seem to be describing the present, not some dystopian future.
The NHS exists to keep people healthy. Private companies exist to turn a short term profit. Which do you think sounds more trustworthy?