Pour Your Heart Out Wednesday

I sometimes worry about the field that I have chosen for my career. I am going into the medical field. My ultimate goal is to be a family nurse practitioner. Right now I am in school getting a two year registered nurse (RN) degree. I love it. I am where I am supposed to be, but I still worry. The whole universal health care conundrum scares me to death. It's not that I am totally opposed to everyone having access to good, affordable health care by any means, I just don't know what it means for me. I am worried that it will have a huge effect on my salary. That sounds very selfish but I don't mean it that way. I just want to have a successful career where I make good money. I don't think that I need to be a multimillionaire or anything like that, I just want to be comfortable. I want to be able to pay my bills without thinking twice. I want to be able to shop, within reason, whenever I want and things like that. I am afraid that this whole universal health care bill will cause me to not be able to make that kind of money. So I guess it is selfish but is it wrong for me to want to be successful? I don't want to be successful at the expense of other people but the medical field is a business just like any other business, it needs to make money. Granted, there should be more nonprofits in the medical field but there aren't. I think that everyone deserves to have quality, affordable health care when they need it. I would be willing to work with people if I had my own practice, but I won't because I don't want that hassle. I want to be in a group where I don't have to be on call all the time and have some time off. It's just something that I think about.

Another issue that I have with the universal health care bill is the cuts that are being made to the Medicare hospice benefits. That just flat out makes me angry. I worked for hospice for about a year and a half and it is one of the best programs out there as far as medicine is concerned. I think that the whole of medicine could learn a lesson from hospice. Hospice is a place where people are dying, it is very sad but yet, it is a time of joy. It's very hard to explain unless you've been a part of a hospice experience but, for the most part, people who have been would recommend it. Of course you have your naysayers, ones who have had bad experiences but I would imagine that the majority would say it's a good thing. I think that people have a right to die with dignity. I think that quality of life is just as important at the end of life as it is at any other time in a person's life. Of course, quality of life is a huge issue in hospice, at least a good hospice. The goal is to give the patient the best quality of life as their life comes to an end. It involves every facet of a person's life. It involves the family as well. It's just an amazing thing that is being cut because it's "unnecessary". Well, I disagree. It's not perfect but the blessing that it allows families to have shouldn't be cut. I don't know what the answer is but cutting the already minimal benefits isn't the answer!!!

I don't know what the answer to the universal health care plan is. I believe that it can be a great benefit but just like our welfare system, there will be people who "work the system" and I think that there should be enormous consequences for them. I think my biggest fear is how it will be legislated because there's a lot of moral issues involved with health care and that is always very personal to people. It's personal to me. I don't know, it seems like there's not an easy answer. If you had asked me before I took my mental health class this summer then I would have said I was all for it except for people who don't have a job, or refuse to get one but, there's a portion of those people who are unable to keep a job due to mental illness. I think that those people deserve to have good health care too. It's an issue where there are no easy answers. I believe that if you are truly unable to work then you should be able to have quality, affordable health care. However, if you choose not to work then the hell with you. The key word here is CHOOSE. There are people out there who think that our government should support them, I disagree. Granted, at the moment, I am "living" off the government, sort of but I still work some and make money. I am just getting student loans so that I have help paying my bills. I am also going to look for at least a part-time job so that I have some steady income coming in. I can't be someone who doesn't contribute to society in any way, I just don't believe in that. See, it's just a tough issue. The problem is weeding out the people who are just trying to take advantage...it's imperfect, as is the screening or weeding out process for the welfare system. Again, I don't have all the answers I just think that we should be very careful when doling out our money for health care. I just wish there was an easy answer....