week six Soc490

Last week my partner, Amy Roberts, and I got the opportunity to interact with Italians in a Market and also a school hang out. The purpose of our interaction was to find more out about what the Italians thought about Universal health care. It was very nerve racking at first and discouraging because a lot of people turned us down and told us to go away. I got about 3 surveys done in the actual market. When we went to the school hang out area though I was able to get the rest of my surveys filled out. 

Being around the students made me feel more comfortable because they were around my age and some of them spoke a little English. From my surveys I would conclude that many Italians think there health care is mediocre. Whether they’d want to change their health care back I cannot say. I find it interesting that Italy is a Catholic nation and believes that everyone deserves care, but they are against abortions.

In May 1978 it was made legal for Italian women to terminate a pregnancy during the first 90 days under universal health care. I find this a hard subject to comprehend because I feel that the Italians do link their spirituality and health a lot more than Americans do. If the subject of whether someone should be given care or not due to their health arose though I think more people would try to link health to spirituality. 

Hoar states that in Britain the “National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) board decides what treatments should be funded by the government based on an accounting statistic that measures, in terms of pounds, how much your life is worth”.  How can it possibly be fair to put a price on someone’s life, it is simply inhuman. God always talks about treating everyone as equals so looking at this in a spiritual way rather than a numeric way it is completely wrong. 

To answer the question of whether we can cure illnesses thru the power of prayer I cannot say. I can say that I believe in miracles. Just the other day I was chatting with Michael about my brother’s car accident he had about 5 years ago. My brother has fallen asleep while driving and swerved across three lanes of traffic and crashed thru a fence and then into a tree. His car was totaled, and my brother was asleep during the whole thing.

He told us that a man had come to his car and asked if he was okay, and asked where his friend had gone? My brother was confused because he didn’t have anyone else in the care with him; only himself and he had not one scratch. To this day I believe that the supposed friend that the man saw was a guardian angel that helped in the miracle of keeping my brother safe thru the entire crash.