Policy Blog # 11

Prompt: What is an important question that was raised for you in one of these chapters? How do you respond to it?

Chapter 12 of the textbook is all about the Health Care System. It discusses various policies that use to exists and policies that currently exist and ways that our governments have sought out to change the overall health care system to better the lives of it's citizens.

While reading the chapter, however there were many statistics that struck me. For example did you have any idea that "Health care costs in the United States are higher than in any other industrialized nation"(315)? When I read that I was shocked, another interesting thing that the chapter mentioned was that "this is due to a variety of factors, including diet, low levels of physical activity, births to teenage mothers, and the high number of violent deaths"(315). When I read that, the thought that was going on in my head before could not be contained.

Here is a question? Would addressing some of these factors be more effective than trying to change the entire health care system?

I am not saying that we shouldn't seek to try and change aspects of the health care system, but I am saying that maybe we should also evaluate aspects of our society that we could seek out to change. When was the last time you saw your neighbors outside? When was the last time you saw kids playing outside on a regular basis? Everyday things are being introduced to us that encourage us to further sit in front of our tv or computer and play video games, watch tv or check on our facebook or twitter accounts for hours. I strongly believe that a reason why we see so much more health issues in people is because of the lazy mindset that is encouraged in our society. I also strongly believe that if we focused on putting more money into our education system, we would see fewer teen pregnancies and fewer drop outs, because I would venture to say that alot of the people that fit into those categories are the ones that later need to rely on the government programs for health care because they can not afford some kind of insurance, because let's face it. Insurance is expensive and difficult to find the right kind of coverage for a your family. I think that if we try to develop more programs that address the various factors listed before, we might see less health care expenses.

Another thing I thought about during this chapter was insurance. What makes insurance so difficult to receive? This summer I experienced a little bit of what it was like to not be insured and I also realized why so many people may not be insured. It is not because they don't want insurance, it is because health insurance is so difficult to get. My family had to change providers and the only provider that would cover us at the time was so outrageous that it was like we didn't even have insurance, and this provider decided to basically only partially accept myself and another family member because of our medical history...we seemed to be a risk. CRAZY! How does that make any sense? Without insurance medical bills are expensive and many people choose to instead of having a regular family doctor, just go to the ER if they are feeling sick. Something to consider when trying to reform the health care system is maybe figure out what makes insurance providers so expensive?

Essentially this chapter just got be thinking about alot of things. I don't know much about what goes on with the Health care system, but by reading this chapter I think that there are other places we could seek out to change, besides trying to tackle something massive like the health care system and the millions of Americans that are involved in this system.