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

Social Policy affected by the Political Process

H.R. 2642 also known as the Federal Agriculture and Risk Management  (FARRM) Act is a bill that is passed every 5 years consisting of nutritional programs, conservation, research, trade, tax provisions, commodity programs, rural development, energy, crop insurance and disaster.  The bill basically affects anyone who eats, sells, buys or grows food according to the Farm Aid.  Although the bill was originally for farmers during the Great Depression, currently the bill leans towards nutritional programs.  The nutritional programs consist of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), other emergency food assistance programs, and initiatives that promote local foods, like the Senior Farmers’ Market Promotion Program (Farm Aid, 2013).

The current Agriculture Act of 2014 (H.R. 2642) was originally introduced on July 10, 2013 to the House of Representatives by Republican Frank Lucas.  Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were both huge supporters of the bill who help influence other Republicans to support the bill as well.  Through much delay, the Agriculture Act of 2014 wasn’t passed until January 29, 2014 after the Republicans who favored the bill led the House vote 251- 166, against the Democrats who opposed the bill split almost evenly 89-103 (Berstein, 2014).

The Quirky Gourmet and other websites list just a few pros and cons to this new 2014 FARRM bill.

Pros:

• There’s a $1 billion a year increase in spending on food stamps and other nutritional programs.
• There’s a $3.8 billion disaster relief program for farmers.
• There’s a bit of a reduction in the amount of subsidies that large-scale farms can receive on their acreage.
• There’s a small reduction in tax credits for ethanol processors.
• Save taxpayers $23 billion in mandatory federal spending

Cons:

• The bill is still geared towards subsidizing the production of a limited number of commodities, rather than building a diversified agricultural system.
• The bill still includes tax credits for ethanol, even if they’ve been reduced a bit. The recent move towards using corn for fuel rather than for food is one of the reasons behind recent food shortages.
• $8.7 billion over 10 years of food stamps will be cut resulting in $850, 000 families losing about $90 a month
• Feeding America said that the cuts to food stamps would result in 34 lost meals per month for the affected households.

People who are working are working at minimum wage, desperately trying to find jobs, and already receive inadequate food stamps. Can you feed a family of 4 on $135 a month? Granted some families get a little more and at the same time, there are people getting less.  Now, in my personal opinion, I can agree that this was a loss for the Democrats, and I try to be optimistic and look at all angles of a situation before I pass judgment.  However, I never gave this bill a chance, due me knowing that I will never come to terms with taking meals from families who need it the most.  Although I am curious if others feel this was a bill for the better, for the worse, or if our society can work with it.

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!