Soc 490; week sei

                                                     The Italian Market experience
                      

Can a disease be cured through the power of prayer? This is a question that can be answered many ways, yes, no, maybe, it depends. My answer to that question is miracles can happen, they happen almost every day and that through prayer, a disease cannot necessarily be cured by it but the suffering, pain and/or depression from it can be helped. There is indeed the power of prayer and with that it can help a person deal with the disease and whatever comes with it. The power of prayer works in mysterious ways, correction God works in mysterious ways. God will not give us anything that we cannot handle and through prayer we can handle whatever comes at us better.

             The Italians healthcare system is different than that of ours in the United States; t.hey have a complete universal Healthcare system. Yes, the United States is implementing a full Universal healthcare system soon, some parts have already begun, but Italy is a little different. For instance the government employs the doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals like fire fighters and police officers. There doctors and nurses are given a lower salary than that of their counterparts in the United States. As for the quality of healthcare given verses the United States, well, that is a question I cannot answer. So this week for our sociology we were given the assignment of surveying ten Italians about their healthcare system, questions like “Do you like your current doctor”, “what is your age” and “do you like your healthcare system”?

            When we got to the market, I was not nervous about asking complete stranger’s questions or not understanding them because most people me and my partner asked said yes and I never really understand what Italians say anyway so it was no different. Me and my partner, Sydney, we to a university where there were a lot of college students and well, all the ones we talked to smirked at the questions we asked and laughed. Most of the college students, I had answer the questions said “no” about liking their healthcare system and laughed at the question and also said some things in Italians. Then, there was an instance with a group of people where they found a mistake in our Italian translated survey paper, medico was spelled on the paper without the c and, two other people that day pointed it out and scolded me for spelling it wrong, which it was not my fault to begin with. I felt like that most of the college students did not take the survey and the questions seriously but thought it was a joke. Now, when we went to the food/ meat market, it was another story.

            As soon as we went into the food and meat market I felt more comfortable asking the older people the survey because they took it seriously. Most of the older people said “yes to liking their healthcare system and almost all considered themselves to be in good shape. There was a specific gentlemen I remember, he was in his 50’s and was very happy to answer my questions.  As soon as he was done with his survey, he made his son, I assume, fill out the survey too, but as his son begun filling out the survey, the man started talking in Italian to me. I nodded my head and said “Si” even though I was clueless to what he was saying until the very end, “Obama, Obama”, that was the only thing I heard clearly and his son raised his hand in excitement. I told professor about this and he said that Italians love Obama. I thought this was very interesting and wondered what the reasons were as to why they liked him so much? As much as I would like to talk about Obama and my opinion of him, I shall keep my feelings to myself on this one, not like that Italian gentlemen that, I think wanted to talk about Obama and really liked him.

            As for our assigned readings for that week, nothing really caught my eye except for Johnathon Ross’s article where he talked about Massachusetts healthcare model. I was unaware of the fact that Massachusetts has a universal healthcare system in place and that it is working for that state. Now, in Ross’s part where he mentions the states system he complains about it and giving negative facts about it like “Costs continue to rise sharply” and “insurers keep 15-20 percent of the premium dollar for their operating costs and for shareholder profits” and then Ross makes a good point about making universal healthcare nationwide “Do we really want to multiply this complex state experiment by 50 before we see if it can actually work?” I think that this point is excellent because Massachusetts is struggling on how to make universal healthcare work and multiply this by 50 like Ross says and well you will have a mess. Another interesting and 100% agreeable quote he makes is “America needs guaranteed, high-quality, affordable health insurance for all, with “everybody in and nobody out.”We cannot attain this goal if we rely on schemes designed by Wall Street and the for-profit health insurance industry.” I agree that the healthcare system needs some work to provide a way for everyone to be able to get healthcare and get high quality care that is universal from the poor to the wealthy but I do not entirely agree that the Universal Healthcare Obama is enforcing is the best way.

            While I do not believe Obama’s way of going about healthcare is the best, I do not have a choice nor does anyone else because it has been passed and America must agree with Obama because he was reelected. Is the Italy’s Universal healthcare working, yes it is, but just because it is working there does not mean it will work in the United States? As for myself being in the medical field and my future is going to be in the medical field, the whole topic of healthcare is very important to me because I am going to be at the center of it, as a nurse helping the sick, the poor, the wealthy, people of all backgrounds, colors and age, people with no insurance or with it. I am already an STNA, working with people of different backgrounds, ages and reasons for needing care, I see that something needs to be done about the healthcare system we have not, especially Medicaid and Medicare, I just do not know what. Well, I do have several ideas but I do not feel like rambling on and on, more than I have to. We did talk in class about how the Universal healthcare document is available for the public to read but it is over 1200 pages long. I would love to read this document, so I could see the true program for what Obama and congress has said it is but it is not only 1200pages long but is full of small print and full of mumbo jumbo, no doubt