So Much For That

So much for that. I've stopped cold and that's the end of reading Lionel Shriver's poorly researched bit of fiction.

I was going along as well as I could, nodding off to sleep from time to time. Dull reading, for some reason, but I can't quite define what made it boring. Too much back story too early in the novel, perhaps. I'm not much of a time traveler. Don't care in the least for science fiction, come to think of it.

So much for that.

Lionel Shriver's novel is supposed to be a diatribe that blows the lid off America's health care system.

So much for that.

I have a strong preference for historical fiction, but it has to be well researched. The facts have to line up with reality, and then I can suspend disbelief. The historical accuracy of Wolf Hall let me accept author Hilary Mantel's premise that Thomas Cromwell wasn't a horrible human being. That he had a teeny-tiny heart beating in his chest....until his head was forcibly removed, but her book doesn't extend that far.

As for Ms. Shriver's research, well, it's one thing to study the subject and quite another to spout off whatever rhetoric you've heard on MSNBC.

Do you know, says Male Character #2, do you know that America's health care system is the worst?

Good God Almighty you can imagine Male Character #1 thinking. How dreadful.

Delve into the rhetoric a bit deeper and you'd find that America leads the world in homicide. No health care system in the world can cure death due to homicide. The finest surgical team can't resurrect the gangbangers who shoot one another to death. That's nothing to do with the quality of health care.

Compare health care outcomes for cases other than murder and you'll find that America has the best system in the world. The best outcomes, the finest doctors, the gold standard of timely diagnoses and treatment. It's the country others come to when they need it now.

How stupid, goes Male Character #2. Why, it's from Truman's time, this notion that national health care is socialism and evil and it's the bean counters running the business world that stick employees with shite insurance coverage.

Sorry, but I can't suspend disbelief to that extent. The system is so grand in England and Ireland that private hospitals have sprung up. If you have enough money, you can see a doctor when you want and get the tests you need when the doctor wants them done. No waiting for months to see a locum from a non-English speaking country who may or may not be a 007 of a physician----licensed to kill.

National health care is the solution? Ms. Shriver failed to do her research and discover that hundreds of letters from primary care physicians in Ireland, requesting consultations with specialists for their patients, were never opened. Visits were never scheduled, medical care not carried forward, because no one ever bothered to open the letters, read them, and contact the doctors.

So Much For That isn't so much a work of women's fiction as it is a flight of fantasy. If only we had socialized medicine like Canada and England, we'd all be better off, but the premise is as realistic as Martians landing in New Jersey. The facts are there, if an author would make the effort.

An afternoon with recent issues of The Irish Times would provide more than enough data to create a more factual account for a novel. Not enough beds in hospitals means people are lodged in the hallways on trolleys, and there are no American style rooms with one or two patients. Not enough doctors means long waits for initial visits, followed by long waits for tests, long waits for results, and yes, people do indeed die while they wait.

Ms. Shriver's Female Character #1 has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, and if only the U.S. had national care like Europe, the woman would have died of the disease long before she could see an oncologist. That's the reality of socialized medicine, and it's the reality that citizens of England and Canada and Ireland must face.

"My father would be alive today if he'd been in America when he got sick," my friend John said, shortly after he went back home to bury the old man after stomach cancer took him too soon.

So much for that. I don't enjoy fantasy and I expect a work of fiction that isn't shelved with H. G. Wells's offerings to be more true to life. I'd suspend disbelief if it was possible, but there's only so far you can stretch your imagination when, in the back of your mind, you're keenly aware of the facts.