Thursday, January 28, 2010

Powers and responsibilities of government and public health

I would like to discuss assignmend reading (due monday) and my related experience. From my high school junior year to my senior year, I worked at a local newspaper company, called Boston Korea. My job was to translate articles from various fields for those korean-americans who have hard time reading English articles. Thanks to my job, I was openly exposed to current events. One of the issues that came up often was Massachusettes's "insurance for all" policy. As we all know, the cost of medical care in the United States is unbelievely high, and by ensuring everyone to get an insurance we technically can save so much money that are getting wasted from emergency room cost etc. While I was reading chapter 3- powers and responsiblities of government, I learned how public health, which i had thought to be vague and one of the government's obligations, is very systematic and there are many others besides the federal government contributing to the health of the population in the united states. Local public health agencies, which get funded by the states, the federal government, federal funds etc are concerned with medical care of the poor and everyday public health issues. State health departments set policies which would be followed by local agencies to ensure general welfare of the population. I think the Massachusettes government which set "insurance for all" policy goes into this category. Also, Federal agencies involved with public health such as CDC, NIH, and FDA, contribute to controlling and preventing human diseases including infectious diseases and chronic diseases, and to conducting various research. In addition, nongovernmental agencies also are involved in the general welfare of the public through education and lobbying. Going back to Mass. health insurance issue, when i read those articles concerend with conflicts and controversies of the policy, I simply thought "this is for everyone's well-being, why can't everyone just be happy with it? Why is it so hard to make such an easy decision?" But because there are so many agencies involved in public health along with politics and economic issues, it is very hard to do so.

No comments:

Post a Comment