Thread by @chudgr

"My main point was to keep my kid alive." So says the father of a six-year-old girl with cancer in @vikkiortiztrib's gut-punch of a story about "cancer-related financial toxicity." chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-… Here's is a THREAD about what I learned: 1/8

It is long past time to abandon the delusion that the "market" for health care can or should operate like a market for any other consumer good. It's long past time to let go of the delusion that we can fix things by somehow "empowering" people to be better "consumers."2/8

The cherished fantasy of a "market" in which "health care consumers" make rational economic choices: that woefully common policy fetish generates more than wildly incoherent (and grotesquely profitable) health policy—though it certainly generates plenty of that. Kicker: 3/8

we tell people they *should* be good "health care consumers," and they believe it. They believe it so deeply that, when getting care for a serious illness bankrupts them, they're ASHAMED. They think they've failed. And here's another twist of the knife: 4/8

To get that shame out of the shadows, we've name it like a disease. Per the story: advocates like @Carla_Tardif of @familyreach "say they hope to take the shame out of cancer-related financial toxicity."

The shame of #CRFT: 5/8

the shame of not having "shopped" well enough; the shame of needing care in the first place; the shame of not being rich; the shame of being a bad "health care consumer." This delusion is heartbreaking.

So, please, let's agree: 6/8

There is no such thing as a "heath care consumer."

There are only people with bodies, who love other people with bodies, & who respond to the threat of suffering or death with a sincere willingness to go to any length, incur any debt, and suffer any indignity. 7/8

In short, #consumership in health care is a sick joke. Let's stop telling it. /END