Transthought

Health and Healthcare

Health seems to be occupying my thoughts this morning. I sit here with a call to jury duty ,and a doctor's note explaining why I should not honor the call. I have prostate cancer, diabetes, and something called neuropathy. It sounds like I should be dead or dying at least, but I get around and accomplish my daily tasks fairly well. I tire easily and want to sleep a great deal.

Health is a blessing, of course, and it can be maintained for the most part by sensible living habits. Many people seem to live a healthy life while others who practice the same or similar lifestyles do not, so sensible living habits is no guarantee. I have lived without major health problems most of my life. It is only in the last two years that I have been seeing a doctor and the medications have kept me going.

My wife has had heart problems for a long time. She, and her two sisters, have similar problems, and her father died of a heart attack some twenty years ago. She and I have pretty much the same lifestyle. What causes illness? Is it carelessness, not attending to bodily needs, or is it pure random acts of violence perpetrated by germs, viruses, and the like? Is it genetic? Is it an accident of birth? I suppose it would be good to have the answers to these questions, and in some cases, of course, it is obvious why a person is ailing. We keep hearing about the importance of research, while at the same time being bombarded on television with pharmeutical ads on every possible disease.

The major monetary concern is money for health care (after warfare perhaps!). Pills, capsules, potions, treatments of all sorts, continue to cost more and more dollars. It is clearly a major part of our budget even with Medicare D. As a child I heard the discussions on socialized medicine and thought it something quite unAmerican. Now I believe every person is entitled to feel well if it is medically possible. Why should the rich be entitled to pills the poor can't afford? It is a nagging question politically and medically, not to mention economically. Food and medicine, housing and transportation should all be available to everyone and government should concentrate on making that possible, and quit this warmongering and building of bombs and missiles. When a person is given life, that person should be entitled to maintain that life with as much ease as is humanly and scientificlly possible. And that is the way I feel about healthcare.

Wayne's Words for August 4, 2006

posted by Wayne Olson @ 9:19 AM