Homework 29

Christopher R
The health care in the United States is organized by having health insurance companies getting paid by the people who are clients of the health insurance company. When the people who are paying this money become sick the health insurance company uses the money to give the hospital giving the person paying the health insurance free care. The materials that the doctors use can also be paid for by the health insurance companies. HMO’s are a type of health plan where the person gets the financial coverage based on the doctors who agree to the guidelines and restrictions of the HMO provider. In the earlier years of health insurance, “Justin Kimball had the idea for saving hospitals financially…to approach his old colleagues with an offer…provide 3 days of care to teachers willing to monthly pay 50 cent.” (Cohn, 8) Then the creation of blue cross became about with hospitals in New Jersey and Sacramento which insured working people, and members of fraternal societies, totaling up to 2.8 million people in 1938.

People who are ill and dying are usually put in hospitals and nursing homes so the people who are ill and dying aren’t always seen by people who are not doctors and nurses. A lot of the time while in these hospitals people who are very sick and dying are given medications and treatments to try to keep them alive. Before being sick some people say when they are in a state of unconsciousness and near death they wouldn’t want to be resuscitated but it isn’t always clear if the doctor should stick to this. There is technology that can help these people and it is up to the doctor whether to try to keep these people alive but at the same time this technology can put patients through unwanted pain. With these new forms of keeping the heart beating it can lead to having people experience unwanted ways of dying and prolonging the inevitable death. However a study called SUPPORT done by two universities shows that “Large percentages of people do not necessarily want their future treatment to be determined by previously written documents” (Kaufman 25).
Families are given the choice try to revive the person who is ill or keep them living, opposed to letting them die. Where some of technology may work and keep the person alive, it can just prolong the death instead of making them better. “52 percent of participating physicians felt that CPR should be offered to all patients regardless of its potential despite a hospital policy allowing them to do otherwise”(Kaufman 28). Although there are alternatives to trying to keep these people alive it comes down to the way the family and the doctor feels. The ill or dying person can’t always speak for themselves and it becomes the job of the physician to say if they want to or not.
“By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human” (Goffman 7). People who are sick and dying are usually kept in hospitals behinds white walls where they are unable to be seen. Someone who is sick and dying is almost always someone who can’t take care of themselves and it is a human expectation to be able to take care of yourself at one point in a person’s life. Usually not being able to take care of yourself has a connotation of being a child, so being an adult unable to take care of yourself is not human like. Then there is the physical appearance of the person who is sick and dying. Like Beth shared about her husband, he looked very different and his face was very different. Not looking a certain way also gives people who are sick and dying a not human like quality. This can be one of the main reasons people who are sick and dying are kept behind the white walls of a hospital. They are given this stigma which makes them almost not human.
A nightmarish atrocity is explored in the documentary by Michael Moore entitled Sicko. This film looks at the people who fall through the cracks of the health insurance companies. There are many people who are unable to claim health insurance because health insurers see them as to much of a risk. People who are overweight, people who are unweight, people with pre-existing medical histories are all subject to denial for health insurance because they might cost the companies more money than other people. The film compares the stories of people who have been mistreated by insurance companies and lost family members from lack of insurance to the countries with health care for everyone. The countries the film focuses on are England and France. These countries are glamorized by flaunting a longer average life expectancy and benefits of having health care for everyone. No one pays, and no one can be turned away from a hospital.






Footnotes:
Staff of Washington Post. Landmark. Publick Affairs. New York. 2010
Cohn, Jonathan. Sick. Harper Collins. NY. 2007
Goffman, Erving. STIGMA: NOTES ON THE MANAGEMENT SPOLIED IDENTITY. Prentice Hall. NJ 1963
Kaufman, Sharon. And A Time To Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life. Simon & Schuster. NY 2005.