Why Jobs isn't a hero

I am a PC as well as a Mac user. I use many of Apple’s inventions: MacBook, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iTunes. These are good products. I once wore an Apple T-shirt to a 7/11 store and the storekeeper said he is an Apple user too. “Oh, these products are so good that only thunder can cause a crash.” Yet when Steve Jobs passed away, the cult he had developed is leading one to wonder the real legacy he has left if we leave design and functionality temporarily aside.

Jobs was named one of the greatest innovators of our time by President Obama. Many consider him to be a greater technologist than Bill Gates. It is not always a good idea to draw parallels between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but since much of their territories overlap, it is difficult not to see one in terms of the other.

Jobs seemed to be the cool guy, more popular among younger generations of technology users. Think for a moment: what has his coolness and popularity amount to for us as users? Bill Gates, with his Microsoft products, left us more productive and efficient with writing (Word), speaking (PowerPoint) and number crunching (Excel). With these tools we can produce something useful. Jobs tapped into our inner urge to have fun by luring us into the wonderland of instant gratification where the boundaries of work and entertainment collapse in our palms. Yes it is our fault for wanting to multitask or multislack, and yes there are productive uses of many apps that promise to enrich us in all facets of life. However, each facet can be fragmentized and diluted, as the temptation is high to move on from one thing to another with the ease his products provide. We all know that at times we have to move beyond the illusion that work is play, to draw lines around different spheres of our lives for some necessary boundaries.

Gates is by far a greater visionary who succeeds in diving into our potential needs, while Jobs taps into our wants. Jobs leads in his innovation by following where the crowd wants to go. For a time, Jobs refused to enter the field of e-reading because he believed people would not read much in text format, until Kindle emerged, after which truckloads of books were shipped to Apple factories for scanning, not necessarily due to a conversion to the belief in literacy, but because there is a big pie out there someone else is eating.

Jobs was a good marketer, but not necessarily a great innovator. Malcolm Gladwell wrote in a recent issue of the New Yorker that Jobs’ genius is in tweaking someone else’s products, including Word into Pages, and PowerPoint into Keynote, and Excel into Numbers, though he could get rather nasty when someone else is trying to do the same, such as creating an Android phone using the same touchscreen concept he thinks only he can claim.

As the names of his products seem to suggest, the man was wrapped around himself into a small package, vehemently defending his own little “i” world of business, epitomized by the Apple headquarter that he built before his death. His “i” world is also too closed for the greater good. I can understand the need for copyright protection not to share iTunes libraries, but as an inconvenienced user, I really cannot see the wisdom or good will in the petty fight to keep an innocent Flash out of his products.

Jobs was a capitalist who didn’t spend more time with philanthropy, which happens to be Gates’ passion. One could argue that this is just a personal choice no one should point a finger at. However, like salt of the world, wealth gives taste only when it is spread out and it will not do much good when it is piled together. There is a saying in Chinese that one of the greatest tragedies in life is that you die before you get a chance to spend all your money. Samuel Johnson also says that “ it is better to live rich than to die rich. ” Both become footnote to Steve Jobs’ life.

Popular as he is, I do not see Jobs as ever having the kind of impact that Gates is having (and will continue to have through his foundation) by making most of his wealth available to cure malaria, polio, or better lavatories in the developing world. Is this just a flash-in-the-pan urge of a capitalist to use his money in order to feel good? Without some deep-seated belief, no sentiments will drive one to give up 95% of his wealth to build a foundation for the greater good. I trust that Gates and his wife truly believe “everyone deserves the chance to live a healthy, productive life.”

As the Jobs fever continues, allow me to challenge today’s youths to model Gates, not Jobs, so that the world will not be littered with Jobs wannabes who cannot innovate and will not care. As an entrepreneur, Jobs may be doing his job, but Gates opens gates for many. If life is measured by impact, then Gates is by far a much greater hero of our times.

Mediocrity the only product of copycats

I was recently invited to speak to a group of new Chinese students about plagiarism: its definition, its moral implication and academic consequences. As a recent New York Times article the China Conundrum exposed, plagiarism has emerged as a problem among the newer crops of Chinese students on US campuses, many of whom are undergraduate students sent to the US to study by their middle class to affluent families, before they have developed the maturity to live and study independently in a totally new environment.

Faced with plagiarism charges, some play the language card to explain their behavior, but such excuses are getting increasingly lame, as universities have stepped up in their effort to educate international students about academic expectations in the United States. I am confident in students’ change of behavior with increased awareness and better guidance. However, I noticed that sometimes plagiarism does not come from moral choices to lie, but from the failure to be themselves in the work they produce. I heard from students who say that all they did is to use notes by a fellow student who took the course in a previous semester to find out what the “correct answers” are, or how they are correctly written. Their English professor LJ Littlejohn, however, explained that he is interested not in their perfect answers in “perfect English”. It is assumed that they as non-native speakers of English, start with bad English and that’s what language institutes are for. LJ said he is more interested in their own thoughts even if they are expressed in their imperfections.

This led me to think of an issue bigger than plagiarism: do we dare to be original in our thoughts in the first place? To me traits to assert oneself as an individual thinkers are harder to cultivate than language skills. And quite honestly, the need to develop critical thinking is pressing in the United States too. However, there is at least a common recognition of its virtue, and various efforts to develop such thinking habits.

Once people fail to recognize their own uniqueness as individual thinkers, a slippery slope will follow, leading them eventually to mediocrity. In copying someone else’s “correct” answers, how are we supposed to develop the competency to come up with our own answers some day, to address the increasingly complex problems we are going to face?

Believe me, this is not an issue faced only by new students in a different culture. Mature elites in the middle classes in China are all the worse when it comes to originality. I once worked for a leading consulting firm in China and I was baffled by the successful consultants’ urge to copy someone else’s work or even life style, even though most of these consultants have received western education. One of the reasons of such mediocrity is that those people have learned predominantly knowledge and skills in their disciplinary areas without stepping further to examine the environment and process with which some of their accomplishments have been produced.

When I went back to China, I also saw that medium-sized cities are copying things bigger cities are doing, and smaller cities were copying from neighboring cities and on it goes. Today, in the urbanization of China’s countryside, I see leaders trying to do the same, instead of figuring out local strengths and specialties, as well as individual talents each area has to offer. It is extremely upsetting to me as I see places losing their character in such imitations.

I blame it on our educational system that has deviated from traditional intellectual wisdom to lead independent, unique lives, or “the spirit to be independent, and the freedom of thought” as described by scholar Chen Yinque.

In recent years, there is much debate on the question raised by one of China’s leading scientist Qian Xuesen: why aren’t we producing masters in disciplines? To produce masters, do not try to learn only from the accomplishments of another country. Instead, flip the process and start to create conditions that would produce talents and masters. Shakers and movers of the world are rarely brought up to be copycats.

I believe that we ought to fight a cultural war against mediocrity. There is no use trying to produce the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg of China unless we create conditions conducive to the unleashing of human potential. Creativity and innovation are popular topics in the Chinese media right now, but how are we supposed to have these qualities without recognizing individual strengths and potentials?

As a start, we ought to step out of the comfort zone of standardized testing as a predominant way to teach and test students, future citizens of the society. We get what we measure. With its all advantages, which can still be utilized, standardized testing alone reinforces the mentality that there are one and only answers to complex problems. Such testing fails to allow students to examine phenomenon from multiple perspectives and to come up with solutions grounded in thorough understanding of a variety of perspectives, stakeholders and interests. Complex problems deserve sophisticated interventions. You cannot expect sophisticated solutions to come from people who do not believe in their own unique talents.

Yet I do not think that we are simply victims to this kind of education. Each and every one of us can become solutions to the problem to start to develop the habit of original, deliberate thinking. We can then perhaps influence people we are in touch with. This change will not occur unless we all recognize that we are all unique individuals capable of thinking creatively and critically. Remember, a life as an imitation is not worth living.


China Daily, Nov 08, 2011

A Matter of Time

Three years since my last visit, I returned to my hometown in China in October, 2011. In a sense I had not returned, at least to the hometown I used to know even from three years ago. The place seemed to have gone through an extreme makeover. The economic development that had taken place is simply jaw dropping. Beautiful houses had mushroomed at the foot of hills. Modern conveniences such as refrigerators, air-conditioning, microwaves and solar-powered shower system have entered households that used to struggle for subsistence. Roads were built to connect one village to another. Almost all families own electric bicycles, motorcycles or even cars that make walking a lost art. After years of driving to and from work, I made a point of walking in the country roads for exercise and relaxation. As I walked, I found myself constantly approached by sympathetic people who wondered aloud why I was walking. Out of respect for their choice for wheels, I confessed I didn’t own any means of transportation there, other than the feet that carried me around.

Farming has also become easier. For fields not yet abandoned to weeds (many are), a new farming method is being used to plant rice. Seeds were scattered in the fields as described in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13). We used to plant by sowing in a seedling plot, then rooting out the seedlings and replanting them in a bigger field where they will grow more evenly until harvested. In my days as a kid, I was a catcher in the rice, shooing the birds from the seedling nursery. This was my after-school program where I also did quite a bit of reading while fighting these angry birds. It would terrify a parent today if a kid did this, as single children’s main purpose in life those days is to get themselves ready for good scores in the upcoming test, whatever that is. Parents force or cajole their kids to apply what Malcolm Gladwell calls the rice paddy work ethics (in his bestseller Outlier) to the preparation for exams.

While kids were kept busy, adults are not necessarily so. With increased productivity, easier transportation, and less time spent with kids, adults have more free time at their disposal. People spent hours eating and drinking in local restaurants or homes. One of our local specialties is called “soup bowls” (“shuiwan”), traditional soupy dishes served in weddings or funerals. The place best known for it is a restaurant called “Daguan Restaurant” (大关餐馆). By my standards it was rather expensive, yet I found its parking lot always packed and all rooms filled. People were eating, drinking and laughing.

During my visit I was constantly invited by former friends and classmates, teachers and officials to such fancy dinners, after which I was often asked to join them in Karaoke clubs to sing songs, or in my case, to listen to them. I was overwhelmed by their hospitality, but soon I found this to be difficult for me as I was now used to quieter time after nine years living in the US. I tried not to go. My refusal, however, was perceived as being offensive, though that’s not what I had intended at all. One of my classmates joked that I’d have to come no mater what, even if he had to take me away from home by hostage, because some such dinners were summoned in the name of welcoming me back home.

On one such occasion, I learned from a dinner host why there is great enthusiasm for these feasts, other than traditional hospitality for friends from far away. I was told that many people at my age have been accomplished in each of their careers. They have their own apartments, cars and fine jobs. After they come home from work, there is actually little to do. Such dinner parties provide occasions for pastime and social gathering, for lack of better methods.

Another important way people spend their spare time is to play cards or mahjong, often involving some gambling. People can easily play deep into the night or till the next morning.

I had nothing but gratitude and reverence for my friends’ hospitality and I enjoyed the food very much. However, such customs were becoming worrying for me too. Some of my friends also whisper that such dinner parties are unhealthy and meaningless, but they go anyway, as it is not going to be comfortable to stick out as a social outcast in a place where you'd often bump into one another.

I wonder why people wouldn’t spend more time with their kids, and the response usually is: “doing what?” Things that I took granted for in America, such as visiting local libraries and bookstores, participating in church programs, and visiting local museums and park activities, were still largely new or unheard of for many average Chinese families. The cultural landscape in China, especially in emerging economic areas, is like a wasteland that cannot be concealed even by the glare of red-hot economic development.

For instance, when I went to a few local bookstores, I found mostly textbooks and textbook peripherals, such as sample tests from various provinces, college entrance exam article preparation guides, or various electronic handheld devices literally called “study machines”. I tried to find books that I translated or wrote in Chinese. Boy was I disappointed! There was none. That didn’t hurt my feelings because I cannot find works by more famous authors either. While kids and adults in America go to local libraries to borrow stacks of entertainment reading by leading authors in many fields, Chinese kids and adults who aren’t in big cities are left with few choices. And I haven’t found any local public libraries in the neighborhood. I think it is imperative to build them. My rich readers, I hope you've paid attention. You might find yourself becoming the Andrew Carnegie in China.

I found great irony in the use of spare time between the two countries. You’d think that life would be more monotonous in the US, where people live further apart from each other. Actually there are all sorts of activities going on. In the evenings, people mow the lawn, read books, or develop various personal hobbies such as woodcutting or duck hunting. On the weekends they go to church services, take Bible classes and participate in small group meetings. In China, unless something is done about it, our economic prosperity will defeat its own purpose of improving standards of life. If people’s hard-earned money is spent on wasteful eating, unhealthy drinking and in deafening karaoke clubs, can the development actually be called progress?

We are what we spend our spare time on. I am definitely not the only person who became worried. Months ago, I had a visitor from China on a Sunday afternoon when we were having a small group of people from the church visiting us. The group leader was teaching kids to sing songs about various virtues in practical terms kids can understand and apply. When they left, my friend commented: while the Americans spend their Sundays reading or teaching their kids these basic values, what are the Chinese parents doing, other than eating, drinking, playing cards or mahjong? Twenty years from now, how different will the two peoples become?

Scar Literature: an Interview with Shepherd Laughlin

Scar Literature: an Interview with Shepherd Laughlin

How would you define “scar literature”?

Scar literature refers generally to literature in the late 1970s and early 1980s that was focused on the negative impact of the Cultural Revolution and the movement to move urban youths to be “re-educated” in the countryside. It started when Mr. Lu Xinhua published the short story Scar in 1978 in Wenhui News (Wen Hui Bao). It was a story about the wounds the Cultural Revolution had inflicted on individual lives. Novels such as the Teacher-in-Charge (by Liu Xinwu), of Soul and Flesh (by Zhang Xianliang), Furong Town (by Gu Hua), Man Oh Man (by Dai Houying) were associated with this genre. I was reading quite a bit of such writing when I was growing up in the 80s.

Why was it important when it was first being written, in 1978 and 1979?

For decades before 1978 and 1979, literature tended to flatten individuals into types, or members of political classes. There are characters who are perfect (“tall, big, perfect” as described in Chinese), and there are characters who are bad, or plain evil. Scar literature started to bring readers to the inner worlds of characters more as rounded characters, rather than members of a group. That was refreshing at that time.

Such literature also coincided with the start of China’s “Reform and Opening-up”. This was a time when politicians in Beijing pushed for a critical analysis of Mao and everything he did in preparation for the economic and other reforms.

Is scar literature still being written today? In what form?

I think it still is, in English, in French, etc. It still can appeal to readers out of China, as Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao and re-education of Intellectuals are some familiar themes that international readers can recognize about China. Scar literature in its narrow sense (when the term was first coined in the late 1970s) is not as relevant in Mainland China as it is overseas. Part of the reason is that the majority of literature consumers are losing their connection with the time depicted in scar literature. You’ve got to be in your 50s or older to relate to the stories told in such literature. Those born in the 70s, 80s and 90s probably don't appreciate it as much.

Interestingly, it is still selling overseas, because international readers found such themes to be of great interest. My guess is that there are some ideological reasons behind such fascination. Scar literature happens to appeal to imagination of a strange, communist society that is described only briefly in history books.

In referring to a contemporary work as "scar literature," are you disparaging or criticizing that work? (Many people feel the original scar literature was lacking in artistic depth and merit.) What is the implication of "scar literature" today?

I am actually rather frustrated with it. Scar literature at that time was a breakthrough, an innovation, and a revolt against a stifling tradition. Such legacy of daring innovativeness was diminishing, with the censoring and cowardice of the writers. Scar literature had a good start, but it didn’t grow up.

Writers who would continue the “scar literature” tradition turned a blind eye to the new wounds and new scars in the society, settling instead for the safer topics of past wounds.

The implication of “scar literature” today is that you ought to inherit the innovative spirit in which the genre was born, not that particular settings, characters and plots for writing, unless you can really produce great art using this kind of elements. There is nothing wrong choosing any historical setting for a story, but literature shouldn't just create mirror images of a time and a space. The good ones raise haunting questions you wish you have asked. Scar literature nowadays is generally dismissed, as it is often too crude in art as you mentioned. It scratches only the surface of the time and it keeps scratching, but it does not venture much further. It became more of the same type of writing that people eventually got tired of. It hasn’t led to anything like Dr. Zhivago.

Scar literature does not probe too deeply into human nature. I found that many writers suffer from a rather simplistic victimization mindset, thinking that they fell victims of Mao’s revolution, while forgetting that each and every one of us has the same potential to victimize. Aren’t these “victims” in scar literature part of the problem as well? Who caused the Cultural Revolution to happen? Just Chairman Mao? What about the youths who enthusiastically turned away from families to pursue their ideals in the countryside? What led students to beat their teachers in these days of revolts? When the time and tides changed, they turned around and said they were victims of an abstract “time” or the “environment”. “Time” and the “Environment” caused them to do evil. “Time” and “Environment” caused them to suffer. That does not convince me. You cannot blame everything on external reasons to have a clear conscience so that you can do what you always do, and think what you always think. If we as a nation do not reflect on what is going on inside of us as individuals, on the bad wolf and good wolf struggling in our minds (in Cherokee folklore), things like Cultural Revolution can happen any time in the future, maybe in another form and under another leader.

I also take issue with the tone of crybabies in much of the scar literature. Writers complained that their youths were “wasted” or "lost" in rural China. I happened to be from rural China. I love it. My upbringing in the countryside lies at the core of my being and is shown in my love of the good earth and a simplistic lifestyle. Although I felt sorry for the personal miseries of individuals who were forced to go to the countryside against their own will, I do not necessarily think that they contribute to any solutions of the problems that they felt they were hurled into. I keep wondering about a number of questions that these intellectuals/writers fail to raise or answer: If the countryside is such a bad place to live in, what are the intellectuals in China doing to lift them out of their miseries? When confronted with social injustices, they choose flight instead of fight. Most scar literature writers end up going back to cities. What about the kindness shown from rural folks to the “exiles” from cities? What’s in it for them? What did they have to gain? They taught them to work, often against their will too. Their lives were intruded into by these outsiders who seemed to impress others as the only ones suffering from the "time". Years later, writers sat in their air-conditioned rooms and depicted them into new negative stereotypes, inflicting wounds on them again. There was a lot of bitterness and less warmth in such writing.

In China, the writing profession used to be rather sacred. People hope writers have “iron shoulders to carry justice into the world”, while all these scar literature writers did was to lament about their bad luck in being forced to go to these lousy places, thinking how their lives could have been better if they had remained at their birthplaces. Why not use their pens to write about ways to heal the new wounds, the tremendous disparity of opportunities between their homes and adopted homes when they were displaced in these years? Why not, for instance, do something for the places where their youths were supposedly “lost”? What James Yen did in his lifetime showed another possibility of how the educated classes in China can relate to a countryside that could use some help, instead of some whining.

Even Lu Xinhua (the one who started the genre) called scar literature “doomed to be short-lived”. He tried to distance himself from it as a way to disassociate his new book The Forbidden Woman from the label. Lu is a very interesting man. He later went to America to try his fortune. I heard he once worked in the Casinos in Las Vegas. I found myself looking for him when I was in Las Vegas for a conference in July this year. I would want to ask him what he thought of the cultural landscape now, if he cared to notice.

What are the connections, if any, between the original works of scar literature and the novels you cite, like Red Azaleas and Brothers? Do the original works continue to influence Chinese writers today?

I don’t think they have much influence on Chinese writers today. Some such writing is not translated into Chinese at all. To influence China, it is better to write in Chinese directly. That’s one of the reasons that people still remember and love the poet Bei Dao, as he is very stubborn in writing in Chinese, claiming that Chinese is his “only luggage” while he was an exile in foreign lands.

Is any genre emerging today that could excite intellectuals as much as the original scar literature did in the late '70s?

Recently I watched a great movie called Steel Piano, which seemed to excite many other watchers as it excited me. It is about a bunch of steel workers whose lives were messed up in the privatization of their factory. In their nostalgia for their time together, they came together to make a piano for one of the workers who cannot afford buying a piano for his daughter.

I haven’t been up to date with literature in China, but I would love to read equivalents in literature about such pains and wounds as China made its transition into a society as it is today. The miseries of laid-off workers, the frustration of recent college graduates, the hopelessness of folks in small towns, the lost childhoods in the countryside, would fascinate more readers in China today because these are the new realities most have to face. I hope that someone can write works based on these new themes. If anybody knows of any, I would really want to read it.

And can you tell me a bit more about your own background, and how you became interested in translation?

I grew up in China in a large family in Tongcheng, China and our family members are now spread out in the social strata —— in the countryside, in towns, in small cities and some in big cities. In the Qing Dynasty, the Fangs from Tongcheng has been rather influential in the Chinese cultural and literary scene, hence my interest in literature, though I do other jobs for a living. I graduated from Nanjing University where I studied American literature. There I started translation. The first book I was working on (with my Professor Haiping Liu and a few other colleagues) is a biography of Pearl Buck by Professor Peter Conn of University of Pennsylvania. Pearl Buck’s cross-cultural perspectives had great influence on me. She showed how being exposed to a different culture can make you more reflective of your own. I hope some of my translation can help readers along those lines.

Ill by Bill

In Joseph O’Neill’s novel Netherland, Dutch protagonist Hans commented that he is “precluded by nationality from commenting on any place other than Holland.” My experience is slightly different. As a foreigner living in America, if it is desirable for me to comment on anything, it is often to provide “a fresh pair of eyes” to look at issues and problems that locals do not see or care about any more. Now you have been warned, let my rant begin.

Recently my fresh eyes were focused on medical billing. My wife had a procedure removing a kidney stone less than 6 mm in diameter. The stone was discovered last December and naturally it caused much pain. She went to her primary care doctor, who referred her to a specialist, who referred her to take a CT Scan. The stone was discovered and prescriptions were given. It didn’t work. Pain returned in February. She went to the specialist again, who referred her to yet another CT scan, and then a “small procedure” was scheduled and performed. The stone was sent to a lab for analysis. We have heard no more about the analysis, while the bills, explanations of benefits and threats about sending collection agencies started to trickle in. These bills came from the primary care doctor, the specialist, the hospital, the radiologist, the anesthesiologist, and some other doctors whose names we did not even recognize. I wonder if we were billed for a nod or “hi” in the lobby. The bills do not seem to reflect what the insurance company says about the expenses. For the treatment, the insurance company may say that the “allowed amount” is 5100 dollars while the hospital’s bill indicates the total charge is 6500 dollars.

The entire treatment, together with the two CT scans, cost over 16,000 dollars, higher than what some people pay for childbirth. Having a kidney stone is often said to be worse than giving birth, but I didn’t know that this statement has financial implication as well. The insurance paid a substantial amount, but it still left us with around two thousand dollars' worth of out-of-pocket expenses spanning two insurance billing years. That stone sounds like a diamond.

Puzzled, I checked with the Healthcare Blue Book, an online advisory resource that provides a benchmark for various medical expenses. The site indicates that the cost should be a few thousand at most.

It is more difficult than what one might normally think to find out where it went wrong. The bills were all written in highly specialized language to prevent any sense making by the ordinary. English professor Dr. Carol Johnson of New Jersey recently wrote an award-winning book called the Language of Work investigating the discourse people use in a specific field. In the book she quoted Foucault as saying “discourse communities create their own rules of formation and prohibit areas of inquiry,” or any inquiries in the first place. For instance, instead of "kidney stone", all the documentation insists on using the word "calculi", which makes one wonder if it requires a degree in linguistics to become a patient.

So with respect to the professionals, I brought the issue to the specialist who ordered and performed the procedure. He simply said he didn’t know anything about billing. I started to call to make some inquiries. I tried first with the insurance company, to no avail. The man answering the phone didn’t have the slightest idea why there was a discrepancy. He was putting me on hold for so many times and so long each time that it eventually became obvious that he just wanted me to give up.

I called the medical billing office, and found that each bill has a separate account number even if you were there for the same treatment. “We have to,” the lady explained, “Otherwise the insurance company wouldn’t take it.” That means you would need to repeat your information all over again every time you call. The National Public Radio (NPR) recently reports that it is for a similar reason some people have lost their homes. Every time a homeowner makes a phone call to the mortgage bank, a new person answers the phone and has no idea of earlier conversations that could have helped a homeowner save the home. In a country where Netflix can predict the kind of movies you would like to watch next, where Amazon can remind you the book you should be buying, where Turbotax can carry over all your information from a previous tax year, why cannot a bank have a way to record earlier exchanges of information? Why cannot an insurance company or billing office generate a consolidated bill in more accessbile language? I understand that the world does not always operate by customers’ perception of things, but it still is asking customers too much to obey service providers’ silly little rules that probably originated from their own inefficiencies, for instance, in dealing with multiple claims.

As there were six to seven such bills, each with a new account number, I could easily lose two whole hours on the phone in such paralyzing, circular and fruitless conversations that basically conclude in one message: that nothing is wrong with anything because this is the way we do things here. I heard what was left unsaid and I began to understand why medical tourism is gaining popularity.

Billing in the healthcare industry is so riddled with problems and secrets that medical billing became a profession that vocational training schools heavily advertise those days. Even with such professionals on board, I found that the left hand still does not know what the right hand is doing. Nobody can provide any straight, useful answers whenever there are cracks between professional turfs. As you sit in front of your pile of paper, you begin to conclude that the only way out is to hire another professional to deal with the bills. In most cases, however, the task falls on the shoulders of the patient or the patient’s family, while they have some illness or recovery to handle in the meantime.

Each country has its own healthcare problems, and America is probably the best country to be sick in, especially for the rich who wouldn't need to care about the cost and the very poor who wouldn't need to pay. Yet it can easily turn into a nightmare for those who are inconveniently ranged in the middle. I suspect that the common denominators of most issues are human greed and indifference, though such qualities can manifest themselves in totally different ways. Inefficiencies may have come from specialization carried to an extreme. The industry and its professionals care more about their professional boundaries than what makes sense to the patient as a whole person. For instance, most medical insurance plans do not cover dental and vision problems simply because these are more expensive treatments. Aren’t teeth and eyes body parts?

In the dire state of extreme compartmentization in the system, an unsuspecting patient is being sent around to labs for expensive checkups, some of which are meant mainly as extra caution against possible claims of malpractice. In other words, ordinary patients are punished for other people’s frivolous lawsuits or people who end up not paying anything. To cover the cost, they sent inflated bills. How is that supposed to be right? Would your neighborhood association rob your neighbor to pay your utility bill? If your neighbor wants to do that of his or her accord, that's a whole different issue.

Medical billing seems to have been designed to produce rather than correct errors, generate rather than eliminate confusion. When there is an error in the billing, then good luck getting it fixed in your lifetime. Common sense tells us that a system will start to go bad if good behavior is being punished and a bad one is rewarded. Given the size of the problems which we can all experience on an individual level, no wonder healthcare makes such good political debates.

Compared to the greater issues in the healthcare industry, medical billing may be a small problem. Is it really that difficult to fix, or is it mercy by the healthcare professions, to make one feel that by comparison, the original illness is a smaller issue to deal with?