Week 5 - Health Care

Hey everyone. I’m back with more thoughts on my favorite class! Now this may shock some you who read this, if any besides you Sarah and Bob, but I was not as surprised or shocked by this week by the lectures or readings like I usually am. Now there were some things I shocked and surprised by, but overall I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of this topic before this week. Oh, you are probably wondering what the topic is right? Well because you asked, this week’s topic was health care. A sensitive subject to some and a very interesting subject to others, like myself.

First lets talk about the lecture this week. We had two lectures, but I’m going to focus on the first lecture last Monday about health care and not the one Sarah did on Wednesday. I’ll be honest that lecture was so confusing and there were so many side discussions and debates going on I was lost, so I’m just going to put that lecture to the back burner now and not even attempt to tackle it in this post. Now I know I say this every time but I honestly had no idea that health care was a part of the nonprofit sector. I assumed that it was some sort of government agency or own separate entity that was always for profit. Maybe I thought that because it costs you an arm and a leg, no pun intended, to have almost any medical procedure done that I just thought that someone was just swimming in money. It was interesting to learn that half of all nonprofit revenue and employment is in the health care sector of nonprofits. Considering how many nonprofit organizations and sectors there are, half just for one sector seems like a lot! $385 billion in revenue and $461 billion in assets, that is a lot for one sector, but another way to think about it is that is essentially the most important sector, because without it other sectors probably would not be around because there would no one healthy enough to keep them around. One of those interesting thoughts.

It was kind of ironic to also learn that 15% of the US population has no health insurance, considering the fact that all US citizens are now required by law to have health insurance, through President Obama’s health care bill. Now I do not want to get all political here but I just have a few things to say about this bill. I was totally for it and truly believe that everyone should have the right to health care and be treated equally when it comes to your health, but when I heard some of the logistics of the bill, like people are going to be forced to buy health insurance that the government provides, I just did not really understand that. Now I can see the government providing health insurance to those who want it, but tell citizens that they have to buy it, even it maybe they do not want it does not really make sense to me. I’m not sure I understand how you can force someone to buy something that they may not want. Now I do understand that most people are going to want health insurance and will buy it, but what about the people who truly cannot afford it? Are they going to be stuck without insurance and without care if they need it? I have just decided, as of right now, that I am going to read the bill, or as much as I can to come to a better understanding of it. I know that my facts or assumptions may be wrong but I just want to make it clear that I am only commenting on what I have heard or seen. But it will be interesting to see what happens to the 15% number in terms of whether it really will decrease, you would assume it would, but stranger things have happened.

Also in the lecture it was interesting to learn that we spend more money people 65 and older, $14,797, than we do on children, $2,650 or working-age people, $4,511. Now I understand it and see why this is, because more people aged 65 and older are declining in health and need for health assistance, but it got me thinking after thinking about Michele Obama’s plan to fight childhood obesity and watching TV shows about fighting childhood obesity and learning to eat healthy, this whole new craze that is pretty much taking over, on whether the priorities, in terms of who spends more money would change. Will the focus of health care be more focused on children now as childhood obesity and eating healthy becomes a huge part of the adolescent years or will the focus stay on 65 and older? Now we can assume that people 65 and older will decline in health no matter how older they get but it is an interesting thought to think that children’s health and money spent on that could be more as the years goes on. Only time will tell.

I decided I’m going to go over readings this week because they were pretty self-explanatory and just kind of restated what the lecture was about. But there you have it, five successful weeks in PPPM 280 and 5 left. On to another week of wonderful learning about the nonprofit sector. Until next time…..