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Walgreens Brought Me Closer To G-d: Healthcare Reform and Jewish Innovation

October 27, 2015 by Patrick Beaulier

PT-Nurse Walgreens blog

For almost three months, I have had a sinus infection. Finally I went to my doctor, a nice older guy that my family has seen for years, to see if he could help. I had just changed insurance companies, and did not have my insurance card yet. The doctor’s staff said, “don’t worry, we’ll take you now and deal with the insurance paperwork later.”

I was so happy: a doctor who cares about his patients and doesn’t worry about seeing proof of insurance first.

Unfortunately, the medicine did not work, and I had to go back to the doctor. And this time, things were different. Really different.

The insurance company never sent my paperwork to the doctor, or so my paper file said. The receptionist at the doctor’s office said that they would not treat me if I did not show my insurance card or was willing to pay out of pocket. I refused and asked them to get the insurance company on the phone and sort it out while I wait. They wouldn’t. It was on me to solve this problem, even though I felt like I was going to die.

So I left. Not knowing what to do, I went to the Walgreens down the street and hoped into the Take Care Clinic, a sort of “nurse in a box” operation that does minor medical treatment.

This experience was amazing. Instead of dealing with a receptionist, I simply input my info on a touch screen. After five minutes of waiting, a nurse came out, greeted me by name, and brought me into the room. She asked what my insurance situation was, and I told her the story about my screwball doctor.

She replied, “Oh, this is no problem. I have my computer here. Let’s go on the insurance company website and get all your info.”

Within minutes, she was on the company’s website, printing my card! No haggling, no nagging. After the exam, she put in all my info into her computer, printed my prescription, and  said, “OK, your prescription will be filled in about ten minutes.”

This was the best health care I had ever gotten. And the best part: it was so cheap that my insurance company paid for the entire visit. No co-pay.

A few nights later, I got a phone call from a random number. To my surprise, it was the nurse from Walgreens. “Hey Patrick, just wanted to call and see how you are feeling.” In the twenty years my family has been with my old doctor, I never once got a phone call follow up. I was impressed.

I began to think about this in a Jewish context. In a lot of ways, negative experiences with Judaism are like negative experience with doctors. Doctors, like rabbis, are perceived to have the easy life. Nice car, nice house, and a lot of authority to back it all up. Doctors and rabbis have support staff that seem to make everything possible. And if you have a bad experience with a doctor or rabbi, it’s probably your fault in some way, since we assume that either of these professions can do no harm.

And both Judaism and medical care cost a lot. While there’s no such thing as “Jewish insurance”, there is certainly a price to pay for all the kosher food, challah, Jewish daycare, tzedakah, synagogue membership, adult education classes, and other events. And just like the insurance companies and doctor’s staff, there is a bureaucracy in Judaism that keeps some people out, whether it’s the convert getting turned away, the LGBT couple who feels unwelcome, or the Jew of color who doesn’t care about labels like Ashkenazic/Sephardic.

A lot of people want a “top down” solution to the health care dilemma. So is the same with Judaism: looking for a “movement” to unite us all.

Perhaps the solution is neither of these. Perhaps it’s simply a change of mindset. And I can think of a few possible ways.

Less Emphasis on Rabbis. My “doctor” at the clinic was not a doctor at all. But I didn’t care. I needed someone who could tend to my immediate needs, not someone who knew brain surgery. It takes just as long to become a rabbi as a medical doctor. I don’t know about you, but when I need a shoulder to cry on during a funeral or someone to celebrate Shabbat with, I really don’t care what my rabbi thinks about European Jewish Settlements From 1910-1925 or Modern Hebrew Grammer.

Think of the Obvious. A clinic in a pharmacy is a no-brainer. There’s medicine, there’s sick people, get a doctor in there and you’re all set! Sometimes, the most obvious answers are the ones that don’t completely reinvent the wheel: they just put two-and-two together. The best I have seen of this, Jewishly, was an independent minyan that had a lay leader, who happened to live in a local retirement community. Every Shabbat, he picked up other Jewish folks from his community and drove them to “shul”. The retirement home had a great lobby, and he would use it to tutor B’nai Mitzvah kids.

Think Like A Business. I’m the CEO of PunkTorah, so I’m a non-profit guy. But I can see where the profit motive could do great things for the Jewish tradition. Example: Sarah’s Matzah. This Matzah company modeled themselves after Tom’s Shoes, selling “designer” matzah. For every box they sell, they give a box away to a community food bank. It’s capitalism, it’s socialism, it’s Judaism. And it works.

A Little Less Talk, A Little More Action. The talking heads online, on TV and in places of power love to wax poetic about how to “fix” healthcare in this country. And all streams of Judaism are neurotically obsessed with making Judaism relevant for the “new” generation. Perhaps this is a good bottom line: a little less talk, a little more action. PunkTorah started with a YouTube page and is now a non-profit organization with two full time staff members.

What can you start?

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Rants Tagged With: Counterculture, darshan yeshiva, doctors, health, healthcare, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, Punk, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, rebel, Religion, Torah, walgreens

PunkTorah Radio: Kosher Vegan Cookbooks and Birthday Trees

February 3, 2015 by Patrick Beaulier


This week is all about Kosher Vegans, Tu B’Shvat and a big OneShul announcement!

PunkTorah Radio: Kosher Vegan Cookbooks and Birthday Trees

Also, subscribe on iTunes!

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Jewish Media Reviews, Podcasts & Videos, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Shabbat & Holidays, Tu B'Shevat, Your Questions Answered Tagged With: bible, cookbook, Counterculture, food, holiday, Holidays, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, kosher, newkosher, Parsha, Punk, rebel, Religion, shevat, Torah, Tu B'Shvat, vegan, vegan cookbook, vegetarian

Parshat Pekudei (Jodie Foster, Adult ADD and Zen Buddhism for Jews)

February 28, 2014 by Patrick Beaulier

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnswnXcRnec

Editor’s Note: It’s #FlashbackFriday with this old video from PunkTorah, originally posted March 2009!

The insights I got from watching the really bad Jodie Foster movie Contact, suffering from adult ADD and Zen Buddhism made me better understand Parshat Pekudei.

Filed Under: Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud), Podcasts & Videos Tagged With: add, adhd, bible, carl sagan, contact, Counterculture, Jewish, Jews, jodie foster, Judaism, Parsha, punktorah, Religion, Torah

The D’var Torah For Valentines Day

February 13, 2011 by Patrick Beaulier

If you’re a person who believes that there is nothing outside the material world: no G-d, no spiritual forces, no power beyond what the senses can experience, then you might be inclined to say that love, for lack of a better word, is non-sense.

Love may, in fact, be an evolutionary development. Knowing that human beings survive better in groups than alone, evolution may have driven our attachment to others. We know that hormones in our brain create the passionate emotions which give us amorous feelings, and our specific desires in our romantic partners come from a process of trial-and-error; our brains learning to attach value to those who have the qualities that make us happy, creating “love maps” which guide us to the right partners.

If love is simply a result of thousands of years of natural selection, then it’s trivial to have a holiday like Valentines Day. After all, we do not have a holiday that celebrates other biological phenomena. This urge to make love the central theme of celebration points me in the direction toward believing that love is in some way “real” beyond physiology.

Ask anyone who does not believe in spirituality if love is real, and you’ll generally get a “yes” reply. That’s because there is something within people that takes the emotion called love, and removes it from this material, biological, personal experience. We can objectively see love as a pleasure button in the brain, but we don’t. We treat love as though it is a condition outside of human experience, like an ideal to strive for, to celebrate, and to insist on from the whole of the human race. Love is both personified, and transcendental. Love is so close that we feel our skin tingle, but so far away that we yearn for it.

Does this remind you of anything?

In the same way that we feel about love, we can feel about G-d. G-d is a condition outside of human experience, an ideal state to achieve, to celebrate. If you believe in the idea of human redemption, then G-d, like love, is something that the whole world should be drawn toward. We feel G-d close to us, and yet, so far away. G-d, like love, seems to hurt us sometimes, and heal us sometimes. And we know from science that our brains may be wired to experience religious ecstasy in the same way that our bodies create the chemicals of love and attachment to those around us.

Science proves what religious has said for thousands of years, that G-d and G-d’s love, are inside us.

It makes perfect sense to celebrate Valentines Day and to feel its Jewishness, because our covenant to cling to G-d, to create a just world, act in compassion for our neighbor, are all rooted in a sense of love that is beyond the material world. So remember this Valentine’s Day, whether it’s romantic love, the love of a friend, familial love, or the love of a child, remember that love, and G-d, are within us, always

And as a side note, there is a Jewish Valentines Day called Tu B’Av. 

Filed Under: Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud), Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Shabbat & Holidays Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, Counterculture, darshan yeshiva, holiday, Jewish, Judaism, love, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, Punk, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Religion, Torah, Valentine's Day

Why I Am PunkTorah

February 10, 2011 by Patrick Beaulier

Tzitzit, used by Creative Commons permission. Photo by 'AngerBoy'

You’ve probably read Patrick’s Jewcy blog post called, “You Might Be PunkTorah If…”. If not, here’s a link.
Read it.
It’s good.
It’s funny and it’s true.
It’s funny because it’s true.

It also made me think about why I helped co-found with PunkTorah. I think it stems from a sense of outsider-ness.

My wife and I go to Tot Shabbat services. We have a two year old. We stand around talking to other parents and we realize:

WE ARE NOT THESE PEOPLE

They seem like they are so much older, but they’re not.

They talk about their mortgages.
We stand there nodding our heads, trying to interject and talk about the concert we went to the night before, the religious ecstasy of watching another human being bare their soul in front of other people.
They wear khakis and polo shirts.
I wear my tzizits, a t-shirt and jeans.
They like pastels.
I have tattoos.
They’ve got paintings on the walls of their homes.
We have a giant pirate flag on ours.
They watch “Grey’s Anatomy”.
We watch South Park and our friends bands.
They read Tom Clancy and John Grisham.
We read Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon.

This is not to look down on responsible adults. This is only to ask:
Where do they come from? What happened to the promise of grown-up suburbia? Did my wife and I miss an exit somewhere?
I mean, we are responsible. We pay our bills. We take great care of our daughter. We go to work and pay our taxes. I guess it’s just that we don’t fit in the Dockers and loafers lifestyle.
So we temple shop. We go to services everywhere we can. We stand around with the other “adults” and wait for the opportunity to name drop some underground bands. We mention Matthue Roth or Y-Love, G_dcast, the religious orientation of Benjamin Grimm*, looking for a glimmer of recognition, a slight nod from another weirdo like us, hoping against hope that someone will hear us, someone will recognize the passwords to this secret club that we didn’t even know we belong to and show us the clubhouse we didn’t even know existed.

Well, if you’re looking for it, relax.

We’re here.

And you are welcome.

*If you said “Thing!” and “Jewish”, you are awesome.

Filed Under: Random (Feelin' Lucky?) Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, Counterculture, darshan yeshiva, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, Punk, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Religion, temple, Torah

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