Altman Pt. 2 and 3

The issue of balancing the budget is the biggest boulder in the way of a successful healthcare system. There is no money, the people do not want to pay more money, some people don't have money, and all want good, full, solid healthcare. Just like today, the cries for healthcare came at a time of recession when people were losing their job-provided healthcare and faced having to pay for private insurance without an income. I think the dangers on depending on businesses and corporations to provide Americans' health insurance is that jobs aren't always guaranteed, and small businesses, which American is built on, can't afford it. While reading this, a lot of the policies and decisions I couldn't fully follow since I don't fully understand economics. But what it always came back to was the power struggle of one party not wanting the other party to do so well that they gain more support. The political system of America is really sad in that sense, that the people who represent the average citizen is more concerned about their party's popularity than the wellbeing of the people.

Also, I couldn't stand the writing in third person. The pompous voice that came through the writing made it hard to believe if Altman's ideas were truly brilliant or if he just wrote them in a way that we would think they were the ultimate solution everyone overlooked.

Altman Pt. 1

The main think that I really noticed in the first part of Power, Politics, and Universal Healthcare was that it truly came in that order. Those in politics with the most power, like Ted Kennedy and Richard Nixon, were not only politicians in leadership positions, but they held tremendous power and had a strong following of supporters. Next came politics before healthcare. It's a sad truth that a lot of progress we hope for and wish to see is held back by the politics behind the legislature. And not in the sense of actual politics, but in terms of Liberal/Conservative balances, concerns about support groups and funding, and worries about future candidacy. I think one of the hardest challenges that come ups when trying to find a suitable universal healthcare system is the drastic differences in incomes and cost of living across America. While many people will agree that healthcare costs are inconceivable and there should be some way that Americans should be able to pay a reasonable fee for solid coverage, there are just far too many people who simply cannot even pay that fee. It is those people that usually need help the most, as they are already more prone to violence and do not have the same access to preventative care and healthy lifestyles. The complications of having such a vast country with different needs under one system is too difficult for so many politicians to all benefit from, and therefore agree on.

Paper Topics

Potential paper topics:

The Role of Sex  Education and Accessible Contraception in Ending the Poverty Cycle

Motherhood is the number one reason girls drop out of school. The United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the developed world (three times higher than the next, ), increasing about 40% since the mid-1990s. The main reasons for unplanned and underaged pregnancies include lack of education, lack of access to contraception, and high-risk behaviors in low-income communities. I would like to look closer into the education programs offered young American's, how mandatory information about prevention versus abstinence could affect rates, the costs of free/easily accessible contraception  versus the cost of welfare for  impoverished mothers, and other health factors like the effects of the lack of pre-natal care in unplanned pregnancies all contribute to the poverty cycle in the US.

The Implication of microbial Copper in Healthcare Facilities 

Medical breakthroughs today usually focus on technological machines and the development of new drugs. However, I would like to uncover the costs and benefits of investing in a very basic adaptation of copper to solve health issues in medical facilities. I would like to see how many lives would be saved from the avoidance of illnesses caught from bacteria in hospitals setting, the money saved in no longer having to treat these infections causing longer hospital stay, and the logistics of adding a new mandatory item to the standards.

The Potential of HIV as the Cure for Cancer

A doctor made an incredible discovery that the self-damaging HIV virus was very good at damaging cancer cells. The other side: living with the more manageable HIV instead.

How Defnitions Deterine Our Fate

Explore the obsession with people 'finding a reason' (any reason) to why they are not up to par with the world's more successful, athletic, and genius. I would mainly focus on the wide spectrum of Autism and ADHD and how high standards and low tolerance for average performance had lead to constant excuses, explinations, and reasoning.