Melissa Carter’s presentation was extremely captivating.  Her segment on the 2013 reaction to tragedy and all the tragic children stories, especially the children killed by their parents surprised me the most. I know these tragedies happen often, I just haven’t followed much of these stories in the media; so, I was astonished when informed of the child maltreatment deaths.   Melissa made a great point to mention how these tragedies can be a constant rotation, where we would find a solution, but in the end can’t prevent these events from occurring.  Welfare services providing prevention strategies based on different age groups was interesting enough to learn.  I naturally thought that all child victims were possibly taught the same coping mechanisms , but it makes since to teach a 5 year-old how to cope with their situation different from a 14 year-old.  This years’ Georgia legislative had all the streams open. However, due to the legislative moving extremely fast, a lot of legislatives  would be push to the side because there wasn’t enough time to come to an agreement.  Basically, the politicians were out for self again, focusing on how they can benefit from passing certain bills.  The single most important thing we can do to improve the creation of social policy in the area of social work is to advocate.  We need to continue to address the issues happening to these children.  It’s important that we spread the word of these cases, hoping to gain additional supporters.  It is unfortunate that people really don’t know what’s going on or care to know about what’s going on until these child maltreatment tragedies happen in their own backyards.

First things first.  I’m the type of person who marches to the beat of my own drum and pays little attention to what’s going on around me, if it’s not concerning myself or immediate friends and family.  This is something I’m definitely in the progress of working on, especially with the career I’m presently pursuing.   So if you can imagine, for me to watch Frontline’s Sick Around America and Sick Around the World I was filled with an array of emotions.  I was enlightened, stunned, distressed, and confused with the stories my country is facing in regards to healthcare.  These emotions made me feel the U.S. to be filled with greedy money hungry people, who can care less about the overall well-being and health of others, because it takes money out of the pockets of the rich and powerful. 

According to Obama Care Facts, the Affordable Care Act is designed to improve the U.S. healthcare system with affordable quality coverage, new benefits, rights and protections, rules for insurance companies, taxes, tax breaks, funding, spending, creation of committees, education, new job creation plus more (2014).  From what I’ve watched in Sick Around America, the current Affordable Care Act has proven it can make changes in the lives of people today.

In the video, there was a lady who told her story on how she use to have cancer back in the 90’s but is currently healthy and cancer free.  At the time she had to go through the individual market to find a company that will approve her for health insurance.  She found an insurance company and passed their physical exam before she was approved to start her new policy.  Soon, this same lady learned of a new cancer diagnosis and had to undergo some major surgeries.  This latest information startled her new insurance company and they found the smallest reason to drop her, avoiding the possibility of having to pay her doctor bills.  Even though she passed her physical exams proving she was healthy, they told her she committed fraud by not mentioning she have been spotting on her application.  Her new insurance policy was rescinded and backdated effective before the policy became active.

The Obama Care Facts website summarizes how the Affordable Care Act changes this story by prohibiting rescissions of health insurance policies (2014).  Insurance companies can no longer find honest mistakes on applications and deem members uninsurable, unless it’s a proven use of fraud (2014).  No one can also be charged more money due to his or her health status or from being dropped from coverage due to pre-existing conditions (2014).  The severity of this lady’s situation, gave her the right to pursue a lawsuit.  The Affordable Care Act now guarantees people assistance with a new rapid and effective appeal process to reclaim their coverage (Obama Care Facts, 2014).  

All in all, the U.S. still has some ways to go to perfect our healthcare policy.  To get there, we must force ourselves to not be concerned on how much the doctor fees, administrative cost, lab fees, technology fees, and any other fees are going cost us.  Basically, we shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel, but looking into best strategies used by other countries and shape them to best match our own.  Putting the 3 limits into practice mentioned in Sick Around the World can be a start:

1. Insurance companies must accept everyone and can’t make a profit on basic care
2. Everyone’s mandated to buy insurance and the government pays the premium for the poor
3. Doctor’s and hospitals must accept one standard of fixed prices

The main purpose of this blog is for students to come together and express their opinions and share their knowledge on social welfare policy.  I hope you ENJOY!