Sociology Discussion Responses Response to Post #1

Sociology Discussion Responses

Response to Post #1

The issue your raise in terms of the long-term negative consequences on the lives and well-being of caregivers is an extremely important one. As you mention, there are various sources of significant emotional strain associated with the responsibilities of providing life-sustaining healthcare to others. Likewise, you mentioned the fact that patient and elderly abuse are problems that becoming increasingly apparent, particularly in the long-term care facility and in home healthcare scenarios. Obviously, this is a problem that demands immediate attention to identify the specific causes and ways of identifying and preventing its occurrence.

The social issue you raise might be one of the most important problems facing contemporary Americans. Specifically, healthcare is becoming increasingly expensive and correspondingly unavailable to many people based solely on their financial circumstances. Moreover, at the current rate of increase analysts predict that healthcare costs could reach forty percent of the entire national GDP within this decade. I would agree with your characterization of Americans being "split" on the issue of healthcare reform. On the other hand, I would suggest that it not a split over different views. Rather, those on the Democratic side of the issue are motivated by genuine fiscal and quality-of-life concerns. Unfortunately, those on the Republican side of this issue seem to be motivated exclusively by its political value in undermining the Obama administration.

Response to Post #2

Frankly, I am very surprised and disappointed to hear your views about the quality and methodologies that you describe in connection with the treatment provided by non-profit mental health agencies. Naturally, I would hope that this is more of an isolated agency-specific problem rather than a more general problem that compromises the care received by large patient populations. I would be very curious to hear some of the details about how widely you have observed this problem and to know whether you believe that there are any such agencies that furnish a higher-quality of free mental health services and medical care and management. Finally, I would be curious to know what your think might be the best approaches to resolve these problems.

I would also agree with you that homelessness is a continually growing problem in the U.S. And that the current economic situation has been the primary reason for that. I would be curious to know how much of that you believe might be directly attributable to the increasing cost of medical care and to what extent you think that is the result of political factors rather than of direct cost issues.

Response to Post #3

I would agree with your point-of-view that contemporary healthcare workers should be better trained in the fields of psychology and mental health counseling. You also raised a very important point linking the increase of mental health issues in the community to the economic recession and to the stresses faced by so many families in connection with the loss of jobs, income, homes, and also in connection with the deprivations and sacrifices entailed in prosecuting numerous foreign military campaigns. If anything, it would seem that mental healthcare will soon become one of the most important issues in American healthcare. With respect to your observations about equal opportunity and justice for different classes of people in the U.S., I would be curious what you think are the major reasons for that problem. Specifically, I would ask you whether you believe that the main problem in that regard is the degree to which current tax rates and tax and trade laws applicable to large corporations are the problem.

Response to Post #4

Your specific interest in and focus on education would prompt me to ask you what you would consider to be the most important changes that might improve the quality of American education. In my opinion, early education still emphasizes a very narrow set of intellectual skills in relation to all of the possible types of talents and abilities of different people. It seems that too much of grade school, middle school, and high school education is still structured around so-called "traditional" subjects that might not be as beneficial to students as more options of subject matter and of methods of instructional learning. Likewise, I would be curious to know your thoughts on the NCLB approach relied upon by the last presidential administration because to my mind, it greatly increased rote memorization and test-taking drilling at the expense of learning rather than improving learning or reducing education disparities in different communities.

Response to Post #5

I would absolutely agree with you on both of your points. First, it does indeed seem that the criminal justice system is more focused on prosecution than on more complex non-enforcement aspects of justice administration. Perhaps the best example is the degree to which this nation's "war on drugs" has resulted in a prison population that severely taxes state and local resources while incarcerating thousands of individuals who are not criminally inclined in any way other than in connection with their private consumption of illicit but relatively harmless drugs such as marijuana.

Second, civil rights inequality would indeed appear to be a serious continuing issue in the U.S., notwithstanding the tremendous advances of the civil rights era of the 1960s. In particular, it seems genuinely incredible that even many of those who desperately needed civil rights recognition for themselves (such as a majority of voting blacks in California in 2008) would fail to recognize the appropriateness of the civil rights now sought by other minority groups, such as same-sex couples. I would be curious to know whether you agree that in future decades Americans will look back at the denial of rights in that regard in the early part of this century with the same amazement as contemporary Americans now look back at the denial of civil rights to blacks and other minorities in the first two thirds of the 20th century.