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Health Care
Mar. 23rd, 2010 03:36 pmI'm not going to go into too much detail on HCR being passed in the US. In many ways, it is not a good bill, and there are very many elements on both sides of the ideological divide that need to be addressed over the next decade to make it an effective basis to rein in the spiraling costs of health care that will strangle the US economy more surely than any other single factor. It is merely a first step down a very long and tough road ahead, but most importantly, it's a first step long delayed and now finally taken.
Being Canadian, I live in a country with a deeply flawed and yet highly functional health care system. My mother was a nurse. My sister is a highly specialized ER nurse who has run trauma wards under Canadian, US, United Kingdom and Australia health care systems respectively, and thanks to her, I've had a unique window into the various cultures and the various merits and flaws of each.
The single fundamental thing that I've taken away from that is that health care, or more importantly, access to affordable health care should be a basic right. We live in intensely interconnected societies, and the ripple effects of medical debt and bankruptcy, restriction of preventative care, and predatory insurance practices are ultimately toxic. I can't tell you the utter incomprehension I have with the idea that an illness can destroy not only your entire life, but your entire future and that of your family's in a few short months. Whether you agree or not, and I've read many very well reasoned arguments for the opposite side, it is simply a position I can't move from.
One of the things I try to avoid is the 'personal interest' stories; the subjective personal experiences that puts one person in one camp or another based on their experience, simply because it is often used to emotionally short-circuit debate about the wider impact of an issue. But they can be important in reminding us in the midst of the debate that any continuous issue, be it gun control, immigration reform, health care or even, hell, student loans, that there is a human dimension to it. There is a human cost.
This is my friend Kevin Schmidt, and this is the story of his family. All I ask, even if you believe that health care is the end of days for America, stop and just consider it before you start screaming 'Nazi', 'socialism', and 'revolution' to understand why those who advocate it have fought so hard.
http://moonandserpent.livejournal.com/826064.html
Being Canadian, I live in a country with a deeply flawed and yet highly functional health care system. My mother was a nurse. My sister is a highly specialized ER nurse who has run trauma wards under Canadian, US, United Kingdom and Australia health care systems respectively, and thanks to her, I've had a unique window into the various cultures and the various merits and flaws of each.
The single fundamental thing that I've taken away from that is that health care, or more importantly, access to affordable health care should be a basic right. We live in intensely interconnected societies, and the ripple effects of medical debt and bankruptcy, restriction of preventative care, and predatory insurance practices are ultimately toxic. I can't tell you the utter incomprehension I have with the idea that an illness can destroy not only your entire life, but your entire future and that of your family's in a few short months. Whether you agree or not, and I've read many very well reasoned arguments for the opposite side, it is simply a position I can't move from.
One of the things I try to avoid is the 'personal interest' stories; the subjective personal experiences that puts one person in one camp or another based on their experience, simply because it is often used to emotionally short-circuit debate about the wider impact of an issue. But they can be important in reminding us in the midst of the debate that any continuous issue, be it gun control, immigration reform, health care or even, hell, student loans, that there is a human dimension to it. There is a human cost.
This is my friend Kevin Schmidt, and this is the story of his family. All I ask, even if you believe that health care is the end of days for America, stop and just consider it before you start screaming 'Nazi', 'socialism', and 'revolution' to understand why those who advocate it have fought so hard.
http://moonandserpent.livejournal.com/826064.html
