Howell 6-8

The breakthrough on bloodwork really was something incredible. Knowing how important the makeup of our blood is and what we can see from it might be the best things in medicine. It doesn't take huge, dangerous machines. You can look up multiple things that could lead to the problem at once. It is minutely invasive. I recently had blood drawn for heart palpitations and they could check my thyroid levels, electrolyte levels, and for infection all at once. I thought it was just incredible that they could detect things like hormone levels, which can direct doctors in so many directions. With the understanding of blood also came the understanding of so many more diseases, especially viruses. Because blood circulates through the whole body it can tell us so much about whats happening inside at the microscopic level. The smaller pathogens we didn't know about before we now do, and it is limitless what we can find from it.

Howell 3-5

This chapter I found so interesting because I feel like true patient care by the doctors is slowly becoming a lost art. I remember when I went to check if I had strep, the nurse smelled my throat swab. I thought it was so bizarre and she saw me looking at her, so she explained how in nursing school in the 70s this was what they were taught. Tests and labwork was expensive and took a lot of time. I feel like this kind of doctor care should be brought back, as I feel like it would actually be much more cost efficient. We spend so much money on tests because of things like malpractice, but I feel like if you have a good knowledge of what you think it is, it is less cost to test for one thing instead of six. It was very interesting to see how doctors had to truly make up the basic care for patients. Things that we look past now, like checking ears or abdominals, seems so routine. But at one time there of course was no routine. Its fascinating to think of how many trials and errors it took to build care up to the standard it is today.

Howell 1-2

The numerical values in medicine was a defining change in the medical world and launched hospitals into the category of patient care they are today. In my opinions, hospitals became professional with the introduction of machines. Machines were something hospitals could offer as part of treatment that home care could no longer. It truly altered people's views on what seeking medical entailed. It was really interesting to see the trends in disease began to develop once it started being officially documented. I think the most incredible machine had to be the x-ray machine. Knowing how often we use them today, its difficult imagining how internal medicine even existed before it. I really enjoyed reading about the business side of hospitals as well. I've always had in interest in the management of hospitals because of the levels upon levels of responsibilities and aspects there are to running a hospital. I think this is so vital because if hospitals weren't run efficiently or correctly, they would have never started up.

Hoffman 6-

Many of the government policies we have were designed around the particular number of people in certain socio-economic groups. Over the years, with the current distribution of wealth, there is a much larger lower middle-class than before. We used to have the poor, a big and healthy middle class, and a few very rich. That's not the case anymore. Our systems in place simply do not fit the population.

It was really quite horrible to read more about race and the healthcare system. I think that when we think of segregation and civil rights, we think of separate schools and the right to vote. No one like to talk about when our nation's racism actually kills a human. We look back at lynchings and the KKK like they were these isolated events carried about by evil, uneducated people. But this is not the case of hospitals. The section about how doctors were suspected of intentionally allowing African-American babies to pass is just horrific. I can't imagine that level of ignorance and the lack of basic humanity to kill a baby. I was cringing just thinking about how much deeper the racism we learn about it history class actually goes. The horrifying part is that its happening again with people of certain religions and the growing Latino population in America. It really opened my mind to rethink what I have learned about American's history. I think we all are so ashamed of the horrible things we were capable of and allowed to be the social norm that we try to sweep it under the rug. In another one of my classes, we were talking about African-Americans are one of the only groups not paid reparations for the crimes against them. The native American communities did, but for some reason native slaves were seen as deserving and African-American slaves are not? Needless to say, I was shocked about how much more I saw after reading those examples.

Hoffman 1-5

I enjoyed this book very much since it focused more on the history of healthcare in the past like Humphrey's book. I think the Great Depression is such a major factor in so many policies we have today for impoverished people. I think the depression changed the attitudes on the poor immensely in America. Because it hit the rich as much as it hit the poor, people opened their eyes to the fact that being poor wasn't always in that persons control. Being poor was often seen because of lack of education, a bad family, and laziness. The depression showed that people who worked hard and were successful could fall right down to their level in one swoop. This led to the government taking on a new roll as an active protector of impoverished people.

Her discussion of healthy v. unhealthy populations of African-Americans in the past and the poor today are just proof of why we need to improve our healthcare system. The shift of the discrimination on race is now a discrimination on socio-economic status. I think so much time has passed from the depression and that idea that we are all need to care for eachother had disappeared. People use the excuse of "this is America, you can always make your own wealth, so there's not excuse to be poor" aged out when people couldn't casually claim land left and right. You need money to make money in todays world. Despite the few exceptions of some raw talents, people need to go to college to make a decent living. Even singers need money for studio time and vocal lessons. Actors need to go to theater school. If people are born into an unfortunate situation, there's not much that they can to do get out of that situation. And these situations get worst with poor health. Basic care for everyone in the nation should be a primary concern for everyone.

Brasfield 6-10

This section of the book was much more interesting to me because it was less about financial issues and more about the important social issues we're facing. The issue of the elderly is always sticky because no one wants to admit it, but being old is an expensive problem. It also is an inevitable problem unless voluntary euthanasia is offered in the US, but even then the numbers won't go down significantly. People think that nursing home are for the 100 year old grandmas that need help with every task. But the reality is that so many people need nursing homes as a basic safety net. If a partner passes, children move out, or a health problem arises that someone needs to be constantly close to help and care, living in a home with assistance is a necessity. The culture of children caring for their old parents is slowly passing since many parents see it as being a 'burden' to their children's lives. In today's world, children often have very different lifestyles than their parents, a main point being that now more families have to full-time working parents. Even in the home, there needs to be care for an elderly person during the 9-5 workdays. I feel that there needs to be a new level of care like assisted living did in comparison to a nursing home. What comes to mind is a community home,  with several older adults and only a few care takes. My mom always jokes about how the divorced women of my town should come together and live on a compound. It may sound bizarre and a little hippie, but it makes sense. One property tax, one cable bill, one phone line, and one yard to maintain can save a group of people thousands of dollars every year. If a major reason for people to move into nursing homes earlier is because it is too expensive to live on their own, a system like this could help those people and alleviate some of the financial pressure of paying for nursing homes.

Brasfield 3-5

The discussion about the future of Medicare was very interesting in that I feel like I hear very little to nothing about this topic in politics now, but it is such a huge issue that is looming ahead of us. I think this is how many of the policies in government are running now. Everything is ignored until it become such a huge issue that they must scramble to find a quick fix to the problem before things start to crumble. The system has not been updated to fit the time we are living in today. Every decade a new group of people reach the age of Medicare assistance, and every decade that group is getting larger. The life expectancy is only going to increase over the years, and there needs to be a system in place to support that before it happens. The need for Medicare assistance will not go away, but if it is not progressing with the population, it will simply fall apart. While the argument was made that we can not predict these numbers of people, age, and care costs, we know that they will go up. Birthrates are not seen to be going down in the US yet, there is no denying that people are getting older, and everything is getting more expensive. Even if there is an overestimation of the money needed, why does that matter? We would have leftover money to use for emergencies to to pay off our immense debt. I don't think that either political party would be against lowering the nation's debt at any point in time.