ClydeStyle

Tag: healthcare debate

  • Do you seriously care about causes?

    One of the great things about living in America is the freedom to protest. This government claims it will defend your right to do just that. I have to say “claims” because I still have the images of the protests during the Civil rights movement where water and dogs were used on peaceful protesters. Also, within the last 5 years with the Black Lives Matter movement and how brutal the police were to them.

    But my point is that causes are connected. It’s almost impossible to just protest one thing because chances are there are several issues within the cause you want to champion.

    Then, we tend to fail in the areas most important with causes — our solutions suck!

    For example, once upon a time teen pregnancy was shameful and the idea that you may get pregnant was a good deterrent for abstinence. Our country at that time was conservative and had a much better observance and reference for the word of God. There were government agencies that controlled what was acceptable over the airwaves and we made sure that what kids could see and learn in media would be something beneficial to their development.

    There were definitely protests regarding unwanted pregnancies and then adoption was the main source of handling them. Then some where the pregnancy dynamic became worse and some women (mostly poor and disenfranchised) sought their own methods of handling the problem (sometimes with a coat hanger of all things). Then Congress sought to solve this issue and put a bandaid on our unwanted baby problem and abortion was legalized. If you can’t beat them, join them philosophy.

    Now before abortion protests started, did we not see the deterioration of the American family? Did we miss how sex was overused to sell everything? Where were the protests for these because this is still happening today.

    We are depleting our resources, making animals that don’t belong to us extinct and using persevatives and additives in our foods that are slowly killing us. What’s our big cause again??

    The largest drug in America is not opiods, it’s sugar. Sugar is responsible for more degenerative diseases then anything else. Where are the protests?? Of all the “walks”, “races”, and “marathons” for cures, we haven’t cured a thing. Our health care system makes the majority of it’s money treating us instead of curing us and their prices are astronomical.

    Is it possible to have a cause of abortion, but not murder? Aren’t they the same thing. There are Christians in this country who are quick to protest abortion but won’t even speak of an unarmed Black man being murdered by police. We protest fur coats, but could care less about the treatment of pigs, chickens and cows.

    We would do well to check our causes so that when we protest (and I believe we should) we can be more productive with our solutions and actually make life easier for others. And above all else, we must avoid hypocrisy!

  • Health care reform: A Start?

    The events of the past few weeks have made it very hard for me to be a proud American. But not for the reasons you may think!

    I’m still not sure how I feel about the health care reform. I know I was for the original draft. I’m still one of those guys who believe that just as our schools, fire and police departments and libraries function on a “universal” way of paying them – i.e., taxes. Our health care system would survive just fine if we adopted a plan similar to France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Canada or Great Britain.

    These do not all function on a “universal” platform, but what they all have in common is that they have stopped trying to make a profit off of someone else’s illness.

    All of these countries have fared well on the World Health Organization rankings for health care systems. We are a dismal 37 on that list. Is there no one else bothered by the fact that as great a country as this is, there are 36 other places in the world that have a better health care system than ours?

    When you compare a country’s health care system to ours – let’s use Greece for example – Greece has about as many doctors as we have pastors and priests. Medical school is free in Greece and of course you know that not only is medical school costly in America, but lobbyists have even sought to control the enrollment and federal funding for it here. Those in Greece live longer, have better access to preventative medication and don’t suffer the insurance “fights” we have to for coverage.

    It should be a crime in our country for someone to die only because our health care system failed them. It should be a crime that someone dies because we allowed an insurance company to refuse payment. And no one should die in our country because they couldn’t afford the cure.

    It seems that we have taken a hands off approach to health care in that, “if it doesn’t affect my family – oh well!”

    I was watching a local newscast in Detroit a few weeks ago and a Republican member of Congress mentioned that he was against the health care reform bill and later in the same conversation bragged of being a cancer survivor. The reporter conducting the interview challenged the congressman on his stance with the health care bill by saying, “It seems that you are one of the lucky ones. What if you couldn’t afford the cancer treatments? I guess then I’d be talking with someone else …”

    As I said earlier, I thought that I was for this bill. It started to change and even after reading and searching through the entire proposed reform bill – something we independents like to call research – it dawned on me that most of this bill doesn’t even go into affect until 2015!

    That’s a problem!

    It seems that there are many items that will “pop up” or take effect down the road long after we’ve forgotten about it. No explanation was given for this.

    And then, the president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield endorsed this bill.

    That’s a huge problem.

    Insurance companies (HMOs in particular) created this problem and have been the enemies since the 70’s. For Blue Cross and Blue Shield to give it the thumbs up, means something is wrong.

    And finally, the passage of this bill exposed the “ugliest” part of our capitalistic society. It showed that the men and women placed in Congress – by our votes – could be bought.

    Congress said things, did things and wasted many tax dollars to only get paid for their services through donations from the private sector. No one (Republicans or Democrats) has written any legislation to stop this madness. Why is it just “OK” for a senator to waste tax player money filibustering on a subject he really is out of touch with? Then after all is said and done, we find that said senator has received a generous donation from the industry he filibustered for.

    All in all, I believe that the health care reform bill is better than what we had. More Americans will receive health care coverage and the denials for preexisting conditions should eventually go away.

    With that said, before we can really make strides in our health care system, we must all first CARE.