The value of life, or at least, of its lowest common denominator

Public hospitals are interesting places. Our hospital takes in about $240 million in research money and dispenses about $240 million in free health care. This free health care is usually reserved for the 1 in 3-4 people who do not have health insurance in this country. Not just the homeless, unemployed, and/or mentally disabled, but also those employees of Walmart and similiar low-wage/low-benefit companies, as well as the self-employed and workers of small businesses.

I have spent last month in the hospital seeing a lot of people with mental illness - and subsequently, the members of our society who are at the very bottom of the social economic ladder; and it has fascinated me, in a disturbing kind of way, how - once these people enter the hospital walls- their lives suddenly come to mean much more than they do on the street. We drive by these people every day: in Sacramento there are areas where homeless people are "allowed" to be, and - within a three block radius - you can see hundreds of them sitting on sidewalks or resting in alleyways. It is completely socially acceptable to drive by and ignore them, politely not stare and fiddle with your radio.

Yet in the hospital things are different, especially if these people are gravely ill. Here, they become Patients and are (usually) treated with the care and respect all patients receive. Money is not a question. Tests are run, MRIs taken, days of expensive hospitalization are extended without concern for the bottom line. Life must be saved.

But is it really the patient's life we care so much about, or rather, are we more concerned with the preservation of our own noble values towards life? We do not save our patients from the slow death of the streets, the threat of violence, disease and suffering. We do not protect them from the pain and self-destruction of their mental illnesses, abusive relationships, nightmarish memories. All we do is not let them die. We remove the 'gravely' from 'gravely ill' and make sure the criteria for "critical" or "crisis" are no longer met. Then we return them to where they came from, and allow ourselves the relief of being able to ignore their suffering again.

I'm not criticizing the process. Doctors' roles have been compartmentalized like every other profession in our society so that no one is ever responsible for very much. We fix things; no differently from plumbers or mechanics, and we cannot do the jobs of social workers, politicians, and charities. And yet, it is disturbing, nonetheless, as it shows us just what society's standard for "life" has become. As long as your body is still kind of working and you aren't going to die on us in the next day or two, we've done all we can, and you are on your own.