SOC 490 Week 5

     This week in our sociology class, we have been talking about open-ended insurance programs and if they are good or bad. We had a very good discussion in this class this week about this topic. We had a lot of people that had very good points. In the readings for this week, we discussed how open-ended payments for insurance were effecting the health care field. A couple of the readings suggested that the open-ended payments promote people to take advantage of the health care system. There are also a couple of readings that discuss the fact that open-ended payments do not make people take advantage of the health care system. In Gladwell's part of the book, he discusses how we do not need to worry about these people taking advantage of the health care system because who really wants to go to the hospital when they do not need to. This reading made me actually think about changing my opinion about whether health care is a right or a privilege because he put in so many real life situations. There was one part of the reading that talks about an average American just trying to pay their bills and not being able to afford health care and they did not have enough money to even get teeth pulled when they were badly infected. So they just let them fall out on their own or pulled them themselves. I cannot imagine pulling my own teeth or letting something get to that point when it is so bad. It makes me sad to think about how many people do not have health insurance and have to live without the basic care in their lives.
     In the other readings, we discussed how the U.S. needs or does not need to implement the Universal Health Care act. The readings discussed how the U.S. is so much higher in things like infant mortality rate and lower in things like span of life for our citizens. In other countries with universal health care, they seem to take care of their citizens and then they live longer and they do not have as many problems. This is sad but true. To quote the author Henry Aaron, "The U.S. health care system is as large as the entire economy of France." This is very weird to me but after reading it, I understand fully that this is true. We have so many jobs just in health care and this is continuing to grow throughout the years.
     The question, "Do you control your health?" came up again in class this week. Everyone had differenct answers once again and people had the answers like, but and kinda. I think you do to an extent. You could have a genetic disease and of course you did not control getting that. But just as an example, diabetes could be genetic or your fault for getting it. You could have type 1, which is usually genetic or you could have type 2 which is your fault usually from being over weight. People could also be genetically prone to heart disease or get it from eating too much fast food, etc. This question will never have a straight forward answer because there are so many things that come into play while answering it.