It's a God damned Shame the way America treats its poor & sick.

[Philosoraptor]

We all live in fear of getting a major illness or injury because we can't afford the god damned pills and doctors and procedures and we have to jump through hoops and humiliation and red tape while we suffer.

It's a god damned shame all the money we waste on war and greed and waste that could go to helping those who need help, we are great at making people dead and crippled and miserable while millions suffer in silence for lack of a few god damned dollars.

It's a god damned shame is all I'm saying.

[porphyrian]

1. In the "richest and most powerful country," no less. - n/t

[Raster]

13. the richest and most powerful country with the richest and most poweful

LOBBYISTS

Their interests are the only ones protected by Congress and the bush* misadministration.

[porphyrian]

15. Painfully true. - n/t

[DanCa]

2. Testify

A thousand thank yous for this post. Recommended.

[Philosoraptor]

4. God Damned shameful the way we have to beg & take up collections

Around here, when folks get sick, other folks take up collections to help out, but this too is a shame, because we have so so much wealth here.

[ikojo]

6. It;'s a shame there must be walks, runs, and rides

for disease X...do they have a diabetes or liver walk in Europe? Or is it just taken for granted that if one needs treatment for diabetes the money will be there.

I am tired of people having raffles, bake sales, marathons and such to raise money to pay their medical bills.

[DanCa]

9. Or a 1000 dollar a plate dinners.

Wouldn't the money that they spend on food and decorations be better spent on say finding the cure for disease x? Dont get me started on charity fund raisers we would be here for decades.
And what kills me is that we'd have universal health care if more people would have voted for Senator Kerry.

[uppityperson]

3. very much a shame to waste money on war and greed and waste

rather than helping people to be healthy and educated and be able to participate in being involved with the world as a whole.

[China_cat]

5. I don't agree with 'alternative' medicine

because the majority of it is just plain quackery, snake oil and bullshit. But I can understand how people are drawn to it when I see that I could get 60 days worth of MSM to treat my arthritis for less than what it would cost for -ONE- dose of my doctor prescribed medication and cause less side effects.

But I know that any 'benefits' I'd get from the MSM would only be from placebo effect so the money I'd spend for it would just be wasted.

[Philosoraptor]

7. !!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!

[K8-EEE]

8. It Freaks Me Out To See So Many Mentally/Physically Ill Homeless

in wheelchairs etc, in downtown's Skid Row (L.A.) Never a nice place abut when I see so many amputees or very aged people in wheelchairs just completely abandoned, I think what the hell kind of society have we become, that we can't look after the weakest and sickest among us. What does that say, especially when we are dropping so many bombs in other places, a practice not considered "too expensive."

[Philosoraptor]

10. They are our moms and dads

and brothers and sisters, down on their luck, fallen through the cracks, existing, hanging on. They are you and I.

[undergroundpanther]

11. Check this guy out

A further uncomfortable aspect of this paradox is that the role of qualified, trained professional usually implies that a skill is being offered which does not place the onus for its effectiveness on the client. Reasonably enough, in consulting a therapist or counsellor, clients expect to be cured, not to find that cure is a matter of their own responsibilty. Psychotherapy must surely be the only profession to posit fundamental principles such as client 'resistance' to account for its inability to deliver the goods.

To understand why therapists and counsellors have been locked in this contradiction for so long one need look no further than their interests. Quite obviously, they are unable to claim that their influence can reach in any significant way beyond the consulting room, and if they are to justify taking fees for their activities, it simply must be the case that clients harbour within them the possibility of change. Therapy creates the crucible in which it is forced thereafter to work its magic, and any theoretical consideration of responsibility is inexorably limited to the (supposed) moral resources of the client.

But the paradox of responsibility is escaped easily enough, I believe, if one extends the analysis beyond the walls of the consulting room. For responsibility is inextricably bound up with power, and power is accorded from without, not from within.

People cannot 'pull themselves together' not out of any wilful reluctance to do so but because the power to do so is not available to them. Exactly the same applies to 'responsibility. I can only be held responsible for what I have the power to do, and if I do indeed have the power to choose, only then can I reasonably be said to be responsible for my choices. No responsibility without power; no power without responsibility. And we are not talking here about 'will-power': the exercise of reponsibility in no way depends on the application of any such mysterious internal faculty (see above, 'The Experience of Self') but rather on the availablity of external powers and resources.

Our 'self-as-centre' culture makes it very difficult for us to conceive of responsibility as anything other than the application of personal influence which has its origin entirely within the individual agent. It takes quite an effort of imagination to see the person - as I suggest we should - as a point in social space-time through which powers flow. Though, as an individual, I am indeed that point through which whatever powers and resources available to me may be, so to speak, refracted back into the social world, I certainly did not personally create them out of nothing.


http://www.davidsmail.freeuk.com/pubfra.htm

[calmblueocean]

12. So so so true. They say they want to win hearts and minds but...

...their actions show otherwise.

Imagine if one year, just one year, the military budget was halved, and we spent that money only on helping those who need it.

[Philosoraptor]

14. Their asses are covered when they get sick.

Out here, we're on our own, while all the money goes to killing people and taking their stuff.