HW 29 - Reading and noting basic materials

Hospitalization

Our guest speaker, Beth, chose to have her husband stay at home when he was dying. He died in his home, with his family, as opposed to in a hospital, all alone. However, many people have a different experience. As depicted in the film Near Death, many people die in a hospital, where many decisions have to be made about what the best way is to help them. Sometimes, a patient will have to choose the treatment that is best for them - the film showed a nurse trying to explain different treatment options to an elderly man. Other times, their family will have to choose what they think is best, most often choosing the thing that will keep them alive the longest, even if that isn't what the doctors recommend (although doctors are sometimes wrong too).


Paying for medical care and political structures

In the documentary Sicko, Micheal Moore contrasts the health care system of the United States with that of Canada, France, and Cuba. The United States is the only country of these that doesn't have some sort of government subsidized health care. In these other countries, everyone contributes so that they can all have health insurance. In the United States, many people do not have health insurance, and those who do are oftentimes not covered for many necessities, because the health insurance companies benefit from denying people care. As discussed in Landmark, while the United States spends more (per person) on health care then any other industrialized nation does, this does not mean that better care is given (67). In fact, in many cases, someone in the United States will be much worse off then someone in another industrialized nation.

Facing Terminal Illness:

In the book Tuesdays With Morrie, the author discusses how Morrie (his old professor who has Lou Gehrig's disease) doesn't seem upset by the fact that he is dying - he sees it as a part of life, a natural occurrence and progression. This is a very different standpoint then most people would take. Whenever someone is shown dying on television or in movies, they and everyone around them is sad. However, Morrie said he wasn't sad, because he knew people would remember him.