29. January 2009 by student.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution declares “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The meaning and scope of this right has been described as among the most contested of the rights codified in the Bill of Rights.What does this Amendment really mean?  Some historians believe the amendment was created so that citizens of the US could stand up and have weapons to rebel against their own government if the situation presented itself that their government proved tyrannical.  Not only is the right to own guns hotly contested but also who should own them and what type of guns should people be allowed to own.  Right now, private ownership of automatic assault rifles in the US is mostly illegal except in certain cases where special permits are issued, but what if we did fully legalize the use of these deadly and rapid firing guns?  Would bank robbers be mowing down a whole crowd of people as well as SWAT team members or would they stick to their pistols and shotguns?

Gun control laws and regulations exist at all levels of government, with the vast majority being local codes which vary between jurisdictions. The NRA reports 20,000 gun laws nationwide. A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine notes 300 federal and state laws regarding the manufacture, design, sale, purchase, or possession of guns.

At the federal level, fully automatic weapons and short barrel shotguns have been taxed and mandated to be registered since 1934 with the National Firearms Act. The Gun Control Act of 1968 adds prohibition of mail-order sales, prohibits transfers to minors, and outlaws civilian ownership of machine guns manufactured after May 19, 1986. The 1968 Act requires that guns carry serialand implemented a tracking system to determine the purchaser of a gun whose make, model, and serial number are known. It also prohibited gun ownership by convicted felons and certain other individuals. The Act was updated in the 1990s with the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act mainly to add a mechanism for the criminal history of gun purchasers to be checked at the point of sale, and in 1996 with the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Act to prohibit ownership and use of guns by individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.

 Firearms are the second leading cause of traumatic death related to a consumer product in the United States and are the second most frequent cause of death overall for Americans ages 15 to 24. Since 1960, more than a million Americans have died in firearm suicides, homicides, and unintentional injuries. In 2003 alone, 30,136 Americans died by gunfire: 16,907 in firearm suicides, 11,920 in firearm homicides, 730 in unintentional shootings, and 232 in firearm deaths of unknown intent, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Nearly three times that number are treated in emergency rooms each year for nonfatal firearm injuries.

Gun control is a serious problem in the US and we need to find solutions to this problem before more innocent lives are taken.  There is a big difference between political parties on this issue.  Republicans want less gun control and less government altogether.  They believe the right to own a gun is an inherited right and think that it should have little regulation.  Democrats on the other hand, favor more gun control in order to prevent school related incidences and unnecessary homicides.

Firearms are undoubtedly the most frequently used murder weapon across the board.  It is up to us to elect political leaders who sway in the directions of our own beliefs depending on the way we feel about the gun control issue.  More gun control will make our streets safer, but without guns how would we protect ourselves and our families from violent crimes? Guns are one thing that you cant live with and you cant live without, and right now the debate goes back and forth with no resolutions in sight.  I think because of the hot debate politicians continue to push the gun control debate further back on the political agenda, seeing as both sides are unlikely to reach a compromise any time soon.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 3 Comments »

29. January 2009 by student.

Right now, in the United States, someone is afraid to go to the doctor.

They’re not afraid because of the pain, or because they dont know whats wrong with them…they’re afraid of the inability to pay for the service.

The United States currently has a fee-for-service system where people are privately insured by companies and pay a copayment along with their provider in order to cover the medical costs.  It is however an extremely flawed system. Health care insurance costs have increased by double digit percentages and perscription costs have skyrocketed in the past few years.  A growing number of people seek insurance coverage through employers and thus if they lose their job then they are out of health insurance.  I personally think that the health care crisis is directly linked to the economic crisis going on right now.  People are afraid of rising medical costs and therefore consumers are spending less on buying things and saving more.  This is partially why the economy is in a downward spiral.  With recessive spending habits because of health care costs, consumers are causing major retailers such as Circuit City and Linens and Things to go out of business. With over 47 Million Americans uninsured, 8 Million of those being children, we need to find a solution to this problem and we need to find one now.  We’ve been putting off this problem for some time now, and now that our nation begins to surpass the 300,000,000 population mark, we cannot afford to put off this problem any longer.

        The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world to not use the Universal Health care system.  Consequently, the United States is ranked by the World Health Organization as 37th in both life expectancy and infant mortalities.  Uninsured Americans are less likely to use regular health care and have preventive services.  A form of universal health care would undoubtedly prove successfull in modern day American society.  Everyone would be insured and government spending would be cut because they wouldnt have to subsidize so many health care provider companies. 

Because of rising health care costs, many small businesses have dropped health insurance for their employees all together or are asking them to contribute to their insurance premiums, which many employees cannot afford to do. And, as we have seen with the laid-off workers, when employees lose their jobs they often lose their health insurance. This cannot happen anywhere else in the industrialized world, even though unemployment is rising in Canada and Europe. Every other industrialized country has some form of universal health care. None uses profit making, investor-owned insurance companies like ours to provide health care for their citizens.  In Canada, a country where universal health care is in full effect, 83.6% of their citizens are extremely satisfied with their health care service, as opposed to 96.3% of Americans being satisfied with their service, obviously barring the bills they have to pay after the service. 

      Opponents of universal health care are mainly Republicans who view health care as a personal problem.  To some extent it is true that people need to be fiscally responsible for themelves, but in the end if we dont switch to a form of universal health care, even the wealthy are in trouble.  Those Republicans, who are mostly business owners or wealth individuals with a high income that ties in someway with the economy, dont realize that their customers are not likely to spend money if they dont have money because of increased medical bills.  People dont want to spend their money and those companies will ultimately suffer.  Many Americans want lower taxes but more services.  This is called the tax service paradox.  Soon enough someone is going to dial 911 and no one will pick up the phone!

  Their are other alternatives instead of swithcing to complete universal health care, such as single-payer systems where citizens draw money from a single fund in order to pay health care expenses.  Medicare is an example of a single payer health care system.  Advocates of single payer health systems in America call their plan Medicare-For-All

Canada’s system is an example of single-payer health care. The national government provides part of the funding, provincial governments manage the hospitals (and provide the brunt of the funding), and doctors in private practice contract with the government for fee-for-service payments. Many Canadian citizens have supplemental health insurance, which covers expenses not covered by Canadian Medicare. Fees for doctors, hospitals and other providers are set by negotiations among doctors’ associations, provincial or regional governments, and the national government. Global budgets eliminate the cost of billing individually for huge numbers of products and services.  The provision of health care in Canada is done mostly via private practitioners, although most hospitals are public. Patients may go to any doctor or hospital in the country.

 Lack of universal health care is often cited as one America’s leading domestic concerns, yet states and the federal government have failed to enact long-lasting, viable solutions for reform and the United States remains the only industrialized country that does not guarantee health coverage to all its citizens.

President Barack Obama hopes to help improve the problems with out health care system that past administrations have put off for so long.  I dont know how we are going to solve the problem or who will solve it but hopefully we will have a time where all citizens of this country are covered and have health care and no one is afraid to go to the doctor because of a broken arm that could cost them upwards of $10,000 out of pocket.

Here are a few statistics that put the crisis in sharp relief:

FACT: One-third of adults (31 percent) and more than half of all children (54 percent) do not have a primary care doctor (National Medical Expenditure Panel Survey)

FACT: 46.6 million Americans, (15.9 percent of Americans — about twice the population of Texas) were uninsured in 2005. (U.S. Census - August 2006)

FACT: More than two-thirds of uninsured adults in the United States, worked in 2005. In other words, 39.8 million workers, who had no health care — more than the population of Canada.

FACT: Federal spending for health care totaled more than $600 billion in 2005, or roughly one quarter of the federal budget. (U.S. Office of Management and Budget)

FACT: The total medical expenditures for full- and part-year uninsured in 2004 came to nearly $124 billion — more than the combined appropriations in 2004 for Iraq and the anti-terror programs.

FACT: Of 23 industrialized countries, the United States had the highest infant mortality rates. U.S. rates were similar to those of Poland and Hungary. (OECD, Commonwealth Fund Scorecard, 2006)

FACT: The United States ranked among the bottom of industrialized countries on healthy life expectancy at age 60 — meaning Americans spend more years lived in poor health resulting from chronic illness or disability. (OECD, Commonwealth Fund: Results from a Scorecard, 2006)

FACT: Barely half — about 49 percent — of adults receive recommended preventive care and screening tests according to guidelines for their age and sex. (Commonwealth Fund Scorecard 2006)

FACT: Close to 100,000 Americans die annually from medical errors — more than double the number of Americans who die annually in car crashes (Institute of Medicine).

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 4 Comments »