shadowsprite
Member
Universal health care is an important campaign issue. Unfortunately a major concern about national health care is being ignored. What kind of health care are we talking about?
There is a large movement toward alternative care. This means health care that is not governed by an MD. There are a great variety of choices out there including acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathic, chiropractic, and Christian Science treatment. How does alternative health care fit into the plan?
-1Sturdybox
Member
I don't think I'd trust a government to deal with nuances. He who holds the purse strings will make the decisions, and those will be hard and fast and not made for individuals. Just trying to get your name spelled right on your driver's license demonstrates the probabilities.
0I agree with Sturdy box that "He who holds the purse strings will make the decisions..." but I think I'd be willing to risk it to have a government that CAN be held accountable holding the purse strings rather than a corporation answering to stock holders.
-1shadowsprite
Member
It often seems that the government trusts 'advisors' to guide its decisions. Sometimes the advisors are actually lobbyists. The purse strings in this case may be the medical field (think drug companies) that has plenty of money to throw into anyone's campaign chest. There are other issues though that have nothing to do with money that influence our government health policies.
In many cases policy is being decided by well meaning medical professionals that are doing their best to protect the population from disease. I feel that alternative care providers should be included in the advisory group that gives input before sweeping health care mandates are put into place and implemented.
I am concerned about the regular reports of new immunizations being considered for children and adults. Who gets to decide which ones and how many should be given to the nation's children? Much of the work in this field is just guess work. Historically the life cycle of a particular disease ebbed and flowed even before vaccinations existed. In an area of the country that has a high vaccination rate against pertussis, 50% of the children that contracted this illness during a fairly recent outbreak were fully vaccinated. Many more adults may have also been affected but were not diagnosed. Supposedly vaccine-induced immunity wanes after 10 years. At what point will the government implement a program to vaccinate all adults against certain diseases or require them to take a course of antibiotic treatment when an outbreak has occurred?
Universal health care sounds great when I think of children who aren't getting the routine care that they need, especially preventative care. On the other hand, I worry about the 'big brother' aspect of health care in this country being under the umbrella of only one type of care. In my experience there isn't total freedom of the press when it comes to a national health crisis. If an outbreak of a disease occurs, often parents of unvaccinated children are blamed even if some of the children had in fact been vaccinated or adults tested positive for the disease as well. There always seems to be a 'party line' during these episodes which makes me believe that the media reports are controlled by government health officials. This is wise in many ways because it reduces fear in the community. On the other hand, it limits knowledge that might help us as a community take a look at the things that we believe are true and examine whether a different course of action should be taken. For example, if in fact 50% of individuals in an outbreak were already vaccinated than why do we always see reports in the paper telling America that the nation is safe from disease because we vaccinate our children? I must mention at this point that when my daughter was 5 she did have a full blown case of whooping cough despite the fact that she had received all the government required vaccinations. I had to quarantine her until tests proved she was no longer contagious. I am not saying that children should not be vaccinated; I just feel that there should be a broader discussion on this whole issues.
Another aspect that we need to consider in the national discussion about health care policy is that there are children and adults all over the world suffering from many of the diseases that we supposedly have under control in this country. What are the options for controlling the introduction of these diseases into the US? Should we work on a plan to provide universal health care to the world? Or should we close our borders to the 'terrorist' that comes as a disease from a foreign land? How could either of these choices be possible? The health of our nation is dependent of the over-all health of the world.
0You must log in to post.
