HW 26- Looking back & forward in our unit

-Over 50 million citizens in America today are living without health insurance.
-Of the people that do pay health insurance companies to pay for their medical needs, a large number will be rejected payment due to something like pre-existing conditions or the excuse that the treatment is merely "experimental."
-In countries like Canada, England, and France, all the citizens are provided with universal, free health care.
-The incentives of the health care system that is utilized my America today are to make sure less care is distributed to the people who need it in order to maximize the profit for the health insurance companies.

The source that has been the most helpful for me so far this unit has been the movie Sicko, despite its extreme bias. Although Michael Moore clearly has his own opinions and represents them much more than the opposing side in his movies, the amount of evidence for his side that he was able to present was too much to ignore. I enjoyed reading the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, but it didn't necessarily educate me that much in the area of the dominant social practices that the United States embraces when it comes to illness and dying. However, the book did represent a situation of an extrodinary social practice, which was the way that Paul Farmer would treat all of his patients as well as his strong motivation to make a difference.

I think that one important question that we should explore is: what are the negative aspects to the health care systems in places like Canada, England, and France? In Sicko, Michael Moore does a very good job of emphasizing what is better about the socialist health care system in those countries than the system we are operating on today, but no system is perfect, so I think it would be a good idea to explore its flaws as well. Another question that might be worth looking into could be: When did the incentives of our health care system truly become to benefit the insurance companies at the expense of the people? I know that in Sicko, it was stated that when Nixon announced his new policy is when our health care system became corrupt, but what if it was actually before then?