Health Care
By Keiti | September 30, 2007
Well, my sleep schedule hasn’t quite worked itself out yet - which means going back to work tomorrow night for my first full night of work is most likely going to be a bit chaotic. I did my best to sleep late today, but only managed until 7:15 when Mr. Dorian Gray decided to use my body as a running board because he thought it was time I get out of bed.
So in an effort to stay away, I’ve had far too much caffeine, which I almost never drink. My eyes are tired, but my brain is all over the place. Last night I managed to stay up until about 1:30 am; I don’t suspect I’ll be up much later than that tonight. I’ll just have to make sure to go back to sleep for as long as I can manage before I have to go to work.
It’ll sort itself out.
At any rate, tonight I’m going to do something I swore I’d never do, and that’s delve a little bit into the political realm. With the presidental elections coming next year, I’ve started doing some thinking about what my vote will ride on - usually, there’s one particular platform that is very important to me. I don’t recall what it was the last couple of elections, except to say that with both Gore and Kerry, I constantly felt like I was getting smoke blown up my ass. Suffice it to say, I voted for who I felt was the lesser of two evils both times around. At any rate, my vote will boil down to whomever I feel is going to fix the state of healthcare in this country and who I don’t feel is blowing smoke up my ass. I’m still evaluating - it’ll all depend on who gets the nod, because there is one potential candidate who I swear I won’t ever vote for. But I’m trying to keep an open mind until the actual nominees are announced. There’s no sense in cutting off my nose to spite my face. If this particular candidate gets the nod - well, I’ll just have to re-evaluate, is all.
There are, of course, many platforms that are important, but healthcare has become a pet project of mine - mostly because I haven’t had health insurance for the past two years. With my last job, even though I was an actual employee, they didn’t offer health insurance (which I added to the long list of evils where they were concerned) and I couldn’t pick up any on my own because I couldn’t afford it on what I was being paid (yet another evil added to the list). It makes me absolutely insane that there are illegal immigrants who get better access to healthcare than I do (and just for the record, I’m not against immigrants - just against the illegal kind) - hell, people in prison get better access to healthcare than I do. Who pays for all of that? The taxpayers, of course, which means I’m helping pay for it.
My dad and I wholly disagree on the subject of socialized medicine. He’s against it, while I’m for it. It’s not so much that I have anything against doctors making a hefty salary - Lord knows they deserve it - but with the pharmaceutical and insurance industries essentially raping the American people, not to mention the ridiculously high cost of malpractice insurance - something needs to be done to make healthcare accessible and affordable for everyone who legally lives in this country. My thought process on socialized medicine is that we should look at the programs in other countries, take what’s usable and tweak it to make it workable for the States. Is that possible? I believe it is, if only we could get rid of the lobbyists and special interest groups. Of course, that’s a simplistic view since there are so many things that affect the rising cost of healthcare - even the American people play a part with the penchant for suing over every little thing, an unwillingness to put their collective foot down to demand that something be done, not to mention an insistence that they won’t put forth any tax dollars. That’s one of the things that’s always perplexed me about the American people in general - they demand all these changes - better roads, better schools, among other things - but no one wants to help pay for it. It’s as if we expect everything to simply be handed to us without having to make any sort of sacrifice for it. We bemoan our tax rates, and yet, in comparative terms with other western countries, we pay a mere pittance. We can’t get something for nothing. Of course, if the government would choose to spend money far more wisely than they do, that would help, as well.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that things desperately need to change - healthcare is but one situation on the list.
Topics: Political Prigishness |