SOC week 5

Oh gee sometimes this healthcare class can make my head hurt. At the beginning of the semester I for sure thought that healthcare should be a privilege and therefore I wasn’t necessarily for universal healthcare. After the readings this week and our first class discussion I’m not quite sure anymore. I mean in reality a type of universal healthcare is already in progress in America so really what I think doesn’t quite matter anymore, the majority voted and they voted universal healthcare. Still though everyone is entitled to their own opinion, yet sadly my opinion has lost its way.

One topic we further discussed in class on Tuesday was the idea of if we have control over our health. In my previous blog I gave the typical “yes, but” answer which seems to be a pretty common answer for healthcare questions but now I a definite answer and that answer is no. In class this week someone mentioned that the things we do like exercising and eating right are all factors that play into our health. I completely agree, everything we do factors into our health but it doesn’t necessarily determine our health. You can be someone who smokes everyday of your life but yet never develops lung cancer or you can be someone who wears sunscreen and a hat each time you go outside and still develops skin cancer. It’s my opinion that what is meant to happen will happen and that applies to our health.  

Before I thought that healthcare was a privilege and as long as you worked hard then you should be rewarded with the privilege of good healthcare end of discussion. However one of the readings this week pointed out a very real and somewhat sad case. In his article Malcolm Gladwell commented on an interview that was dated back several years ago and dealt with uninsured Americans. In his article he quotes the interview writing that Loretta, who worked nights at a university research center in Mississippi, was missing most of her teeth. “They’ll break off after a while, and then you just grab ahold of them, and they work their way out. It hurts so bad, because the tooth aches. Then it’s a relief to just get it out of there.” To me that is such a sad thought. Here is a woman, who has a job, and a respectable one at that, and yet she can’t afford dental healthcare and as a result has to suffer through what I can imagine is intense pain and pull out teeth herself. No way could I ever do something like that. And this is exactly where I get confused which side of the argument I fall on. On one side we have people like Loretta and on the other side we have lazy people who are always just looking for a way to cut corners. It’s a very hard topic to firmly plant your feet on one side.

Tomorrow we go and interview real Italians about their opinion on their universal healthcare system. I think it will be quite interesting because up until now we have only been discussing theoretical scenarios statistics, which can be misleading, and the opinions of authors. I think these interviews will really help us to form our own opinions about universal healthcare and possibility of it working for America. If citizens who have had universal healthcare for years and years don’t like it I imagine many of us will lean towards the opposing side of universal healthcare as well as vice versa.