Below are some of the reasons I strongly connect with and think we need to act upon as a responsible citizen.
Healthcare is one of the worst issue this country has throughout. There are issues regarding healthcare for everyone. I don’t like how we have to pay such enormous amount of money for health insurance but it’s also true that people had to pay thousands before the Affordable Care Act. People with a job that pays them the minimum wage has to pay such high deductibles is just not something I agree with. I have come across several people who in the past few years has lost their health insurance because their new job do not provide them any. And there are millions in this country of billions, who are here illegally and don’t have any form of insurance. “Prohibitively high cost is the primary reason Americans give for problems accessing health care. Americans with below-average incomes are much more likely than their counterparts in other countries to report not: visiting a physician when sick; getting a recommended test, treatment, or follow-up care; filling a prescription; and seeing a dentist. Fifty-nine percent of physicians in the U.S. acknowledge their patients have difficulty paying for care. In 2013, 31 percent of uninsured adults reported not getting or delaying medical care because of cost, compared to five percent of privately insured adults and 27 percent of those on public insurance, including Medicaid/CHIP and Medicare”( Jennifer Dorning, 2016).
The healthcare system is something I connect a lot. It is mostly because my mother has been really sick and needs to have checkup every few months. I came to this country with zero idea about healthcare system it has and how it works. But I have been researching on healthcare because being the only one in the family, able to communicate effectively about any topic, I had to do most of the decisions on my parents behalf, with no one to guide me. My mother was hospitalised in July of this year and she only had emergency services from her Medicaid and after coming home, she was told to see doctor as soon as possible and I had to buy healthcare plans through Obamacare. “On March 23, 2010, the Affordable Care Act revolutionized healthcare. By 2014, the economy benefited from having 95 percent of the population on health insurance. The greater number of people receiving preventive care reduced the number of expensive visits to emergency rooms. That slows the rise of healthcare costs for everyone. That's because Medicaid reimburses hospitals for emergency care. Why did health care need to be reformed? Rising costs threatened to take over the entire federal budget. It was also the no.1 cause of bankruptcies. In return, Americans received the worst health care in the developed world. It is the only one of 33 developed countries without universal health care” ( Kimberly Amadeo, 2018) Bangladesh, despite being a developing country, compared to the healthcare system in the United States, I think has a better healthcare system. People do not feel pressured to buy insurance and healthcare is readily available everywhere though there are still some setbacks by some negligent authorities.
After coming here, I heard Michigan is the only state that has access to freshwater due to the great lakes. But the authority also decided to screw that up by suppressing the water crisis that is still going on in Flint. “The crisis began because the water from the Flint River wasn’t treated properly, so it leached lead off old lead pipes fitted in homes across the city. After nearly two years of complaints from people living in the city and denials from state and city officials, an emergency was declared and Michigan attorney general Bill Schuette opened an investigation into the crisis. By the time the water was switched back to Lake Huron in 2015, thousands of children’s blood registered high levels of lead and at least 12 people were dead from a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak related to the water switch” (Nathalie Baptiste, 2018). The people of Flint used to receive free water bottles since the incident but since April of this year, they stopped receiving water and despite the assurances from the governor, they can’t go back to using tap water because they can’t trust the authority anymore.
One of the reasons, Trump was voted to power is I believe was due to all the lies he spread about lowering taxes. Republicans believe in cutting social security and benefits such as Medicaid, Food stamp and invest more in defense strategies. Trump used a lot of bigotry statements and defamed Democrats and specifically Hillary Clinton during his presidential campaign in 2016. Whatever he said about lowering taxes to get people to vote for him, fast forward to 2018, all his policies are now basically buttering up the rich classes because they are paying a lot less money in taxes and people with minimum wage has been just emptying their pocket, never saving a dime.The movie that we saw in class shows all the differences. Michael Moore says America is no more ruled by the government but the wealthy class. Thus, we need to educate people in our community on how the tax system works in the new age in order to make people more knowledgeable on who to vote based on their promises about taxes.
Students who go to school are paying a lot more money now than what college students in the late 90’s did. Students get into debt early on even before getting into adulthood. This is not education is supposed to be. This gets even hard for teachers because one can not simply become a teacher. They would have to get a bachelors and masters and basically fall under a pile of debt and by the time they get a job that barely saves them anything, the debt just keeps on increasing. My high school teacher shared her story of getting a bachelors and two masters degree with us where her education didn’t cost her a fortune whereas a new student-teacher with the same degrees these days has to start with a job with which she can barely make her ends meet and also has the pressure of clearing off the debt while paying for bills and getting their own house. There has been countrywide strikes in 2018 that even reached Michigan. “A statewide strike in West Virginia ignited the movement by teachers around the country. On Feb. 22, educators left their classrooms, demanding higher pay and relief from rising health care costs. Teachers didn't head back to class until March 7, a day after the legislature passed a 5 percent pay raise for all state workers, including teachers. The governor has also convened a task force to explore ways to rein in health insurance costs” (Cory Turner, 2018).
The road conditions in Michigan is getting worse day by day. “Communities typically rely on federal money to help fund a significant proportion of major road projects. But the state hasn’t been doing that and it hasn’t been doing that for a long time. There doesn’t seem to be an appetite in Lansing to come up with more money to take care of roads. That leaves local and county officials with few options — if the state won't come through, they will have to ask for property tax increases. That's a problem...because people already feel like they are paying too much in property taxes”( Christina Hall, 2018).
“According to FBI statistics for 2014, of religiously motivated hate crimes, Jews were targeted 57 percent of the time. Muslims were the victims 16 percent of the time, followed by Catholics, Protestants and atheists/agnostics” (Mark Oppenheimer, 2017).
“In race categories, African Americans were targeted the most -- in about half of the reported 3,489 racially driven incidents in 2016 and 1,200 incidents were motivated by bias against victims based on sexual orientation or gender identity” (Saeed Ahmed, 2018).