Health Care Assignment

Should the U.S. move to a Canadian, French, or English model of health care?

Something that is portrayed to be so easy and so FREE in other countries is so complicated and EVIL here. Everything about health care is out of the control of the people. “Here the government is afraid of the people, but there [America] the people are afraid of the government” (SiCKO). That is a great point to make; here American’s will complain about everything from A to Z but in the end do nothing about it. The Big Boys [Corporate America], have weakened us into thinking that there is no alternative to the AWOL, which is basically ‘get rich or die trying’, so moving to a system that has any affiliation with “advocating public or state ownership” (en.wikipedia.org), would be completely unacceptable. America thrives on draining its people of money, as opposed to some place like Canada that is more concerned with the wellbeing of its people. It depends on the person that is being asked the question. For instance, an elderly man said “America’s health care system is a 10 [out of 10] people come here to get the best care” that might be true but, if you’re poor and living in France and you were sick and needed some type of medicine or operation that for some reason only America offered you would be out of luck, so basically what the man on the street neglected to say was that ‘if you’re rich you can get top notch care in America’. Personally I think that we should move to a more Canadian or French model of health care.


What are the major problems with the U.S. health care system and society?

Health care, like I’ve said before, is not something that many people think about. I was completely unaware of how health care in the United States worked, or how health care in other countries worked either. Media shows us things about health care but it never tells us what is going on. They [media] make it seem as if the health care offered here is good and the only thing you should worry about is choosing the right ‘coverage’. “Remember, health insurance is supposed to protect you in case of a catastrophically expensive illness, not simply cover your routine costs as a generally healthy person” (consumerreports.org). Its’ like we are steered from wanting what is probably best for the people of this country, “As inefficient as our government seems to run as it is, -just look at the economy- does America really want the government given authority over something as necessary as our country’s health?”(letters2president.org). Its like beating around the bush forever, all we know is that we need ‘good coverage’ and apparently we don’t want the ‘unsteady’ government handling our health. Not everyone is covered and they in no way deserve this, America needs to change the way it does things. This health care system that we seem to be stuck in, is only helping the rich and killing the poor.


What does the U.S.'s lack of guaranteed universal health care and guaranteed vacation show about the "American Way of Life"?

This tells us that America cares about money, more than its people. America is a country run by rich white men who want to make more and more money. Although America may be the most powerful country in muscle it is the weakest in unity. But in a way, I think that it will be a rocky road to go down if we plan on trying to change it. It’s been like this since the very very slanted development of this ‘great’ nation. The rich always dominating things at the top and the poor doing the dirty work way at the bottom. America ignores everything and the people here have been trained in a way to not challenge authority because if you do the consequences seem like the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze’. If we were able to change how the people here felt about the government then maybe that would change a lot. As long as American’s think that authority doesn’t control everything then we can make a change, a much needed change.



Sources:

http://www.consumerreports.org/health/insurance/health-insurance/good-plans-vs-bad-plans/health-insurance-good-plans-bad-plans.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

http://www.letters2president.org/letters/8180-universal-health-care-good-or-bad

AWOL Class, Andy