SOC week 6

WOW! It is so hard to believe that I am in week seven and writing my last Sociology blog! This trip has been one of a kind and I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn’t come. I mean honestly I would be missing out on so much! This week in Soc. class we began wrapping up our conversations about healthcare, universal care, and the possibility of the power of prayer. In addition this week we went into a market and surveyed Italians about their opinion on healthcare.

I suppose to start off I’ll comment on the experience of surveying Italians in the market. That had to be one of the most intimating experiences I’ve had. Really though, think about it we were supposed to go up to complete strangers who didn’t even speak our language and ask them to fill out a survey for us. Well to say the least I got off to a rocky start and was pretty nervous to go up to strangers and ask them to fill out my survey. I mean typically I’m a pretty quiet person in large groups and so this took a lot for me. All in all though it was a really good experience and the results I got really surprised me. All the readings we have been doing in our Universal Health Care book suggest that Europeans like their universal healthcare system but that was definitely not the impression I received tallying up my results.

In his article Henry J. Aaron writes about how America should move slowly and cautiously towards universal healthcare. He writes that, “Democrats should beware of once again approaching health care reform the way [in the comic strip Peanuts] Charlie Brown always approached the football that Lucy held- heedless of experience, credulously hopeful, and flat on their backs.”  I love that he wrote this because this is how I feel. In class professor talked about whether we needed to dip our feet in the water and test it out or just jump in head first, I have to say I prefer to dip my feet. Being cautious never hurt anyone and this way no one ends up on their back. I think when it comes to something as big as healthcare before any decisions are made it is important to look at the views of your people but also the views of people who have a system you are looking to adopt. From my results the views of the Italian people do not like universal healthcare, from the view of our book it looks like the Canadian people like universal healthcare, it would be interesting to take a poll now.

The last notion we talked briefly about in class was the idea of power of prayer. I am a very VERY strong believer in the power of prayer. With that said though the question we were supposed to address was whether we can cure disease through the power of prayer and my answer to that is no. While like I said, I believe in power of prayer and that miracles can happen every day I don’t think prayer can cure. I think that because health is more than just physical prayer can help and soothe your mental and emotional health but cure your physical disease? No.  In my opinion prayer is a way to give hope and a way to look forward to a better circumstances. This is why a priest presents the last rites it is used as a way to console and soothe the mental health.