New friends, and perspective changes. Slash reinforcements.
It's funny what growing up in a place will do to you. I never really thought about it until I moved far, far away, where attitudes and languages and body language are different, and started to see my country in a different way. Part of that difference is just starting to see it as "mine" for the first time.
I've been making a lot of new friends. Some of them are French, but a lot of them are anglophone. Some of them are Canadian, and some are Australian, and some are English and Welsh. They're all part of the commonwealth, but the idea of connectedness seems to be one-sided -- that is, the British see Australia and Canada as very loosely connected to them if at all, and the Canadians and Australians I've met seem to feel a lot more part of Britain than the British think they are.
These countries all have established national health care, and almost the first thing that happens on meeting someone from a country such as this, where everyone speaks at least one common language well enough to talk politics (and I mean, shortly after "what's your name" and "where are you from") is "How about those crazy Republicans. I can't believe you guys don't have universal health care yet."
Which, I admit, is a surprise I share. Most of the British folk I've been meeting recently are actually medical students here in Bordeaux. They're not much older than me -- one or two years -- and they're maybe a year from graduating and starting their careers as doctors (younger than our med students can graduate, and with, I gather, a lot less debt than an American medical student could dream of, unless he or she was rather wealthy, with the added advantage almost guaranteed job placement with the NHS). This brings a whole discussion on our educational system which, having been attending college in France, I have to say gets a bad wrap from Americans who think the Europeans have it right. I calculated up the hours spent in class last semester per course, and if I had been taking a class in the US, I would have learned less than 1/4 of the material necessary -- class time would have extended barely into the 4th week of lectures, and none of the readings or assignments we would have had would be included.
But that's not the point. If I think about the idea that not everyone can afford health care in the US, I think that's a pretty big failing on the part of a government. They taught us over and over in various US History and Government classes that the founders believed the government should exist to protect the people, above all. It seems to me that letting them die because they don't have the money to survive is a pretty big oversight, if that really is the goal.
The really strange thing is watching foreigners' faces when you tell them about the system. You know, if you're lucky you pay your insurance premiums, and then you never get really sick. You get a little sick, maybe. Bronchitis, or the flu. And then you go to the doctor, where you pay your co-pay, which seems to have an inverse relationship to the amount you can afford to pay, and you get a signature on a piece of paper, and then you go pay for a prescription that may or may not be covered by your insurance -- might just be another small fee, or it could be a couple hundred dollars. Even if it's something as commonly taken as arthritis medication.
And if you're really really lucky, you never get sick enough that your insurance decides it no longer wants to cover you. Because nothing sucks worse than dying because you can't afford medical care, except maybe dying in spite of trying to afford medical care and leaving your family in a ridiculous amount of debt, who then struggle to pay for your funeral arrangements.
I guess my point is, growing up in the system, it just seemed how it was. You make your appointment, you pay your co-pay, you buy the prescription or you don't. I was lucky enough to grow up with good insurance and parents who could afford to take me to the doctor when I was a sickly child with lungs prone to fill with mucus. But I know a lot of people who grew up trying their best to NEVER have to see a doctor, because they couldn't afford the visit, let alone the medication. And that, when you start trying to explain it to someone else, just sounds more ridiculous by the minute.
Health care should be accessible to everyone. I know there are money problems with starting up a program, but the idea that the same people can believe simultaneously that the right to life trumps the right to choose AND that the poor don't deserve the right to life baffles me.
That's my rant for the day.
I've been making a lot of new friends. Some of them are French, but a lot of them are anglophone. Some of them are Canadian, and some are Australian, and some are English and Welsh. They're all part of the commonwealth, but the idea of connectedness seems to be one-sided -- that is, the British see Australia and Canada as very loosely connected to them if at all, and the Canadians and Australians I've met seem to feel a lot more part of Britain than the British think they are.
These countries all have established national health care, and almost the first thing that happens on meeting someone from a country such as this, where everyone speaks at least one common language well enough to talk politics (and I mean, shortly after "what's your name" and "where are you from") is "How about those crazy Republicans. I can't believe you guys don't have universal health care yet."
Which, I admit, is a surprise I share. Most of the British folk I've been meeting recently are actually medical students here in Bordeaux. They're not much older than me -- one or two years -- and they're maybe a year from graduating and starting their careers as doctors (younger than our med students can graduate, and with, I gather, a lot less debt than an American medical student could dream of, unless he or she was rather wealthy, with the added advantage almost guaranteed job placement with the NHS). This brings a whole discussion on our educational system which, having been attending college in France, I have to say gets a bad wrap from Americans who think the Europeans have it right. I calculated up the hours spent in class last semester per course, and if I had been taking a class in the US, I would have learned less than 1/4 of the material necessary -- class time would have extended barely into the 4th week of lectures, and none of the readings or assignments we would have had would be included.
But that's not the point. If I think about the idea that not everyone can afford health care in the US, I think that's a pretty big failing on the part of a government. They taught us over and over in various US History and Government classes that the founders believed the government should exist to protect the people, above all. It seems to me that letting them die because they don't have the money to survive is a pretty big oversight, if that really is the goal.
The really strange thing is watching foreigners' faces when you tell them about the system. You know, if you're lucky you pay your insurance premiums, and then you never get really sick. You get a little sick, maybe. Bronchitis, or the flu. And then you go to the doctor, where you pay your co-pay, which seems to have an inverse relationship to the amount you can afford to pay, and you get a signature on a piece of paper, and then you go pay for a prescription that may or may not be covered by your insurance -- might just be another small fee, or it could be a couple hundred dollars. Even if it's something as commonly taken as arthritis medication.
And if you're really really lucky, you never get sick enough that your insurance decides it no longer wants to cover you. Because nothing sucks worse than dying because you can't afford medical care, except maybe dying in spite of trying to afford medical care and leaving your family in a ridiculous amount of debt, who then struggle to pay for your funeral arrangements.
I guess my point is, growing up in the system, it just seemed how it was. You make your appointment, you pay your co-pay, you buy the prescription or you don't. I was lucky enough to grow up with good insurance and parents who could afford to take me to the doctor when I was a sickly child with lungs prone to fill with mucus. But I know a lot of people who grew up trying their best to NEVER have to see a doctor, because they couldn't afford the visit, let alone the medication. And that, when you start trying to explain it to someone else, just sounds more ridiculous by the minute.
Health care should be accessible to everyone. I know there are money problems with starting up a program, but the idea that the same people can believe simultaneously that the right to life trumps the right to choose AND that the poor don't deserve the right to life baffles me.
That's my rant for the day.
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