1. “It’s a parallel universe. There really is no relation between the massive accumulation of
wealth in one part of the world and abject misery in another.”
(Mountains Beyond Mountains p. 218)
2. Paul Farmer hates the idea that resources are scarce but only when it comes to the poor,
meaning that expensive drugs are available only to those who can pay for them. (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
3. Wild cries erupt from the child: “Li fe-m mal, mwen grangou!’ Farmer looks up, and for a moment he’s narrating Haiti again. “She’s crying, “It hurts, I’m hungry.” Can you believe it? Only in Haiti would a child cry out that she’s hungry during a spinal tap.” (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
4. This fact check from Sicko shows how insurance companies try to cheat with false claims:
Blue Cross/Blue Shield: "Sixty-seven Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies across the nation have paid the United States a total of $117 million to settle government claims that Medicare made primary payments for health care services that should have been paid by the Blue Cross/Blue Shield private insurance companies, the Department of Justice announced today." (Sicko)
5. Beth treated all the people who worked at the hospital with an equal amount of respect no matter what task they performed in treating her husband. She made the effort to get to know them asking about their lives and families in order to build stronger relationships with them and have them care more about her husband. (Visit from Beth)
Mountains Beyond Mountains made the strongest impression on me because it shows how the world seems not to care about the illness and dying of the poorest peoples, and it shows what can be done by one man and others influenced by him to make a huge difference in the lives of people who need the most help. Sicko made a big impression on me about what’s wrong with this country’s health system because it tells who is to blame.
Questions to explore in the final two weeks:
Euthanasia – Physician assisted suicide
We can talk about the reasons people are for it and the reasons people are against it. We could have a debate.
Funerals – Burials vs. cremation
To get started we could show the Mike Nichols and Elaine May video, “$65 Funeral”
and the Carol and Robin Williams one called “The Funeral.”
Then we talk about cost, space and environmental issues, but it would be really good to
show the videos.
The idea that the rich deserve great medical care and living conditions and the poor don’t because they are responsible for their bad luck should make everyone really angry not just Paul Farmer because it is the exploitation of their land and resources by the rich and powerful that has made the poor people poor. We should all hate the fact that so many wealthy corporations and governments take no responsibility for the illness and the dying of desperately poor people.
When poor Haitians didn’t take all their medicine, members of the medical establishment said that they were “non-compliant” and used that as a reason not to give them more medicine especially if it was expensive. Farmer explained that there are many reasons why poor people might not be taking medicine. For example, they might not be able to get to the clinic or they might be selling it because their family is starving. He called the physicians “non-compliant” if they weren’t making sure their patients were taking their medicine. He
conducted a test and found that when patients were given a little cash for food, transportation and child care they did get their medicine.
Sicko should make Americans think about what is wrong with a health care system that is for profit. It is crazy that insurance companies try to cheat people out of the coverage
they have paid for when they get sick, but since they are trying to make big profits, it makes sense why they do. Hospitals and doctors charge way too much for their services and so do
drug companies because they are all trying to make a profit. It makes sense that the government should be running health care setting limits on what all the for profit health
care providers can charge.
No comments:
Post a Comment