Kaiser, Sweet Kaiser

Because students around the world, in Israel as well as in the States, are generous with their teachers I have pinkeye. Yuck. The scourge of educators everywhere, along with the even more unpleasant lice, I myself have probably had pinkeye six or eight times in my twelve years of classroom practice. Going to the other side of the globe did not protect me and on Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after arriving home profoundly exhausted, I found myself in the waiting room of the Kaiser urgent-care clinic in Oakland.

I was reminded of a trip I made in December to the family medicine clinic in the Wolfson complex on Diskin Street in Jerusalem, suffering from an ear infection so painful that it had become impossible to open my mouth all the way or to chew. What a difference between the two trips: then I could not read any of the forms I had been required to sign, whereas now I could read everything from the HMO's patient care guidelines that I was handed along with my deli-style waiting room number when I checked in to the sign on the wall asking people to please "cover their cough" since it's flu season. Then I sat waiting with Ethiopian immigrants and Filipina home health care workers, the slice of population who benefit most from the semi-socialized Israeli insurance system, while here I sat with Mexican day laborers who were losing income even as we sat there waiting to be seen for our collective maladies and Chinese moms who murmured reassurances to their fussy, feverish children in a language I could not understand.

Oh wait, maybe that part was not so different after all?

Half an hour and a ten-dollar co-pay later I was picking up my prescription for antibiotic eye drops, fully appreciating the fact that while I am not paid for my sabbatical this year my employer does still provide me with health insurance--a far cry from the 400 shekels ($105) I paid to see a doctor and 57 shekels ($14.50) I paid for ear drops at the clinic in Jerusalem. When it comes to managed health care the United States still falls far short of providing for everyone but selfishly, in this moment, I felt like Dorothy except in Keens instead of ruby slippers. There's no place like home...