HW 29

Paying for Medical care

Our country's medical insurance system does not match up with our wealth. We have been spending enormous amounts of money on healthcare however, there are still approximately 50 million people without healthcare insurance(Sicko, Michael Moore). Healthcare has become expensive to even those with coverage many times driving them down into debt such as what happened to a family showed in the movie Sicko. Our healthcare budget is being misused. We are throwing money into the system but not using it efficiently. Although we are spending over a 100 billion dollars on our healthcare system we are ranked 37th in the world for healthcare, that should is simply inexcusable for a country that has as much wealth and resources as the US does.

The process of dying

There are different ways of dealing with death. Death is something that we many times would rather ignore. It shows us that we are mortal regardless of what we believe. For this reason we many times refuse to accept our illnesses and pretend we are completely healthy until we reach the point where denial is inevitable. For example Beth's husband had cancer and was feeling very weak but only until his symptoms were at the extreme did he decide to go see the doctor. In our culture we are not taught to deal with death even though it is an inevitable part of everyones life. It is only logical that we will have to deal with death, yet we don't know how to act around people who are ill and dying.

Isolation

Being ill is already very difficult to deal with however the isolation that people many times feel when they are ill makes it even harder. The article "stigma and social identity" by Erving Goffman shows that someone who does not meet certain standards or has something "different" about them are not seen on an equal level by their "normal" peers. This is something that very often happen subconciously. People who are ill are often babied or, in which ever form it may be, are treated different then they normally would. In nursing homes people are confined to a building in which they are surrounded by doctors and nurses, they often can not take care of themselves and need others to do so for them. According to Goffman's article it would only make sense that those taking care of the patients who can't do for themselves would not view them as equals and would not have the same respect for them although they are human. Those people who are taking care of the patients now will eventually need care themselves.