Broken People, Broken System
Posted: October 7, 2010 Filed under: EMS, Spirituality, Thoughts 5 Comments »
I think on of my biggest frustrations is when people fail to see the bigger picture. When a system plays out, just the way it is designed to operate, why do we blame the people who are merely actors in the process? Why do we shoot the messengers?
For example, there are 30-40 million people in this country without health insurance. Many of those people are good, respectable individuals who find themselves in a difficult, and possibly temporary, situation. Others have been raised within a culture of poverty – social, spiritual, cultural, and financial poverty – they don’t know any other way. It isn’t their fault they are in the situations they find themselves, and they don’t know any other way out. Why do we blame these victimized people for the using the only system they know?
Why I Favor Universal Access to Healthcare
Posted: March 30, 2010 Filed under: EMS, Parenting, Spirituality, Thoughts 3 Comments »When I was born, all the way back in the 1950s, expecting parents didn’t have access to ultrasound images of their babies. So, you can imagine my parents surprise, shock, heartbreak, and confusion when I wasn’t born perfect. A bilateral lip and cleft palate is a pretty disturbing deformity, but aren’t they all. My Dad had just been accepted into radiology school with the prestigious Pacific University, but after just three classes, he had to give up his coveted spot and go back into construction to pay for the necessary surgeries that I would require.
So much for his hopes of breaking out of the poverty in which he was raised. My parents lived in my grandparents home for quite some time, and they never quite rose out of that financial and emotional setback.
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A few weeks ago I was meeting a couple of friends for a quick bite to eat. My friend Paul tripped and fell in the parking lot and received a nasty laceration on his right eyebrow. Immediately upon inspection I told him we needed to take him to the emergency department, just across the street at Good Samaritan Hospital. He declined. I pushed, but he still declined.
Filtering Fear and Fascism
Posted: March 23, 2010 Filed under: EMS, Parenting, Spirituality, Thoughts 7 Comments »My thoughts on Sunday’s health care vote…
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The passage of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), otherwise known as Obamacare, universal healthcare, and other terms, is arguably one of the most controversial issues of our day. To me, it seems like more heat was generated after the passage of the Bill, then before. It also seems that much of the debate has degenerated into name-calling, generalizations, and ignorant statements. This sadly has generated more heat than light.
While I have tried to be a relatively open-minded participant in the discussion, contributing links and observations via Twitter, Delicious, Facebook, and other online media, for the most part it seemed as if those discussions would quickly spiral out of control. More than once I deleted inflammatory comments. Recently, I asked my followers if my contributions had influenced anyone. I only received one response (thank you Brandi!) to the actually question, and then paragraphs of derogatory remarks and hateful speech. Again, I deleted the conversation.
Today, I do not want to debate the merits or concerns of the actual Bill. (feel free to add your opinion to the poll below) I do not want to hear how horrible the passage of this legislation is to us as a country. I also don’t want to hear high praises for the changes coming in 2014 (when the law is fully implemented). Instead, I want to talk a little about how we, generally, as individuals, and groups, process ideas and communicate. If you start commenting, please don’t try to debate the actual healthcare Bill. I will moderate comments freely. This post isn’t about healthcare, freedom, taxes, poverty, or partisans. This post is about how we filter ideas and how those filters keep us from communicating clearly.
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