Monday, October 26, 2009

casual stories

There are numerous stories that can be told about this issue. There could be one supporting the reform that talks about a single mother who cannot support her family let alone pay for health care. There are also the stories of people coming to America illegally just to take advantage of the benefits of our health care system. As I've talked about in the past weeks, I agree with the second option. I know a lady who lost her husband a few years ago and has no other family except for the two kids she is raising on her own. She worked hard in life to be able to pay for everything she needed to like health care which payed off because a year ago she got sick with cancer. Because she was smart with her money and saved when she could, she was able to get through those hard times. These are the types of people our government should be helping. The ones who have worked hard and did all they could but maybe still need some help financially. However, our government sees that as unfair when they decide to help the citizens who need it and not all the residents that do. Just because you live in America, does not mean you get all the benefits. To get the benefits, you have to be a citizen, paying into health care, medicare, medicaid, and so on. Not all people see it like this but they should. In case people didn't realize, this country has a huge debt that needs to be paid off. This will never happen if we are constently paying for members of other countries' health care.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

ideal policy outcome through data

"In the case of Medicare, this means expanding a program that is already going broke. Medicare reimburses doctors and hospitals at rates 70% to 80% below those of private insurers, which means below the actual treatment costs in many cities and regions. Providers either eat these losses—about half of U.S. hospitals are running a deficit or close to it—or they raise prices for private payers. This cost-shifting isn't dollar for dollar, but all empirical research shows that it adds tens of billions of dollars to consumer health bills, and this will accelerate if several million new patients are added to Medicare. That means higher prices for health insurance." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514404574587981316751944.html

This paragraph is summed up in the last sentence. basically, this piece of data tells us that the cost of health insurance is going to keep rising if the bill is passed. This is beneficial to the point i am making in saying that we need to not pass this reform bill. More debt is not what this country needs.

Monday, October 12, 2009

framing American Health Care

This is a picture of all the people in support of this health care reform. This picture gives the idea that all these men wanting health care have some sort of stake in this reform and so they would somehow profit from this new health care. The Pharma, unsurers, politicians, business men, and hospital assitants all are laughing and enjoying their new wealth that is spread out all over the table. They take up most of the picture but if you look at the bottom corner, there are people drawn in really small asking "what about us?" Everything that was drawn has a suddle meaning like instead of writing hospital assistant on one man's sleeve, the artist wrote "hospital ass." and this could mean nothing, but since the artist behind this drawing is obviously not in favor of this reform, i would interpret that it has a more than one reason for being written like that. Also, the people are drawn so small to represent that it this reform is supposed to benifit them, but it seems to only be profiting the politicians and insurance workers and so on. This reform that is supposed to be centered on the people for the people, seems to only be good for the people it wasn't designed necessarily to help.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

manipulation

Frames are used to shape my issue by cutting out some of the facts this health care reform would lead to financially and ethically. The media only talks about the good things the health reform would bring like how everyone would have health care. They fail to mention that rather then paying for ourselves, we would be paying for everyone, even those who don't even want it or aren't willing to contribute anything themselves.
The public's view of almost everything is skewed in some sort of way so this issue is no different. Everything has some sort of effect on the way people think. The little things people say, or hear, or see all impact a person's views on different topics. When a President promises change, people only think of something different. They don't really consider what that change might be because they are too caught up on the fact that there is going to be change. Now this change doesn't necessarily have to be bad but if people were to study what it is the President is referring to when he says change, maybe they would be able to have facts to back up why they support him or perhaps even loose their support for him. Like this, the Health Care Reform promises change. People are not happy with the health care we have now so they want something new. However, they are not taking the time to do research and study that this change won't be for the best. They think it would be so nice if we could take care of everybody, but they don't know it is their tax dollars that will be paying for everybody else's health care. Their hard earned money will be going towards the people in this country who are not documented or otherwise, here illegally and don't feel the need to contribute to the country they now call home and prefer to live off of the government and basically, the citizens. With all the new's channels putting ideas into peoples heads, it is hard to know what people would think on their own. There are too many other people's thoughts and beliefs cluttering their mind.