Quote:
Originally Posted by Kostas
Thanks formerroadie, interesting discussion indeed.
I don't want to launch a contentious debate, but there's something I cannot understand.
While media are reporting fierce battles about an annouced/launched health care reform in the states, reading what you wrote one gets the impression that nothing's gonna or is about to change... So pessimistic?
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Things will change. Different people will get the money. Since it's a lot of money, there's a lot of noise.
Those of us who have no money to offer believe our wishes will be ignored; history says that's what happens. Our health care industry is hostage to a swarm of special interest groups: insurance companies who work to remove coverage from anyone who costs them money, pharmaceutical companies who work to force the industry to push their drugs, religious wackos who try to insist their morality be a major part of any health care plan.
For many years now, most of the US has had
abstinence-only sex education in its public schools. (California was the only holdout for a long time; I believe we're up to 25 states that don't have it.) This means teens weren't taught how to avoid pregnancy or sexual diseases other than "don't have sex until you're married." It also means that, once they got married, they had no idea how to prevent pregnancies or mitigate risky behavior.
We had (still have) kids who didn't know you could get pregnant if it was your first time. Or thought that if you did it standing up, you can't get pregnant. Or thought that oral sex had no risks, because they'd picked up the idea that anything that prevents pregnancy, prevents all other risks of sexual activity. And I've met women who thought "since it takes the Pill a month to start working, that means it takes a month to wear off."
Our families, our children, are held hostage by an industry that's beholden to gambling companies, drug pushers, and religious propagandists.
And all of those have a lot of money, and a lot of political pull. The rest of us believe there will be changes... we've just got no faith that those changes will include "the average middle-class family can stop fretting over losing their house if one of their kids gets hit by a car."