My obsession with government corruption comes from my aforementioned need to make logical sense of everything that I see. Here’s how I’d break down the current state of healthcare in the United States:

I see elected officials in a supposedly representative democracy who are not following the democratic will of the people, a large majority of whom agree with me in their desire to implement a single-payer system. I believe that a representative democracy is a great way to represent the will of the people in public policy, and when that does not happen, I get just a little bit frustrated. I essentially want all avenues of escape from performing this duty to be closed off by any legal means necessary. Campaign finance is the reason why single-payer, or even an opt-in public option, hasn’t already been signed into law. The most pragmatic way to eliminate the most amount of health-related suffering in this country is to ensure that the most amount of people have access to quality, affordable care. The way to do this is to look objectively at the rest of the modern first world and follow their examples of how to properly ensure the health of the citizenry.

I planned on updating my passion blog with the continued dichotomies of U.S. citizens and their European counterparts, but I find this to be too exhausting and not looking at the root of the problem. Focusing on the absurdity of campaign finance laws in this country allows me to further analyze many issues that are connected with legislation and its implementation (AKA everything important in this country).

I believe that a litmus test for both parties must be introduced by each party’s respective leadership. I believe that, in order to run for a Congressional seat, a candidate must first pledge his or her allegiance to fixing the healthcare system via a process that is logical, evidence-based, and responds to the will of the people. Although this is kind of like me having my cake and eating it too, I believe that this allows a lot of wiggle room for candidates to put forth their own ideas instead of just listening to some Penn State student’s blog. Of course, this cannot be drafted into law; the First Amendment protects politicians in their ability to assemble and speak of whatever policies they wish.

My two cents is that real, scientific, demonstrably-effective solutions to healthcare in American ought to be a must, a requirement from each major political party in this country. The good thing for party leadership is that these solutions are already empirically popular among the general U.S. voter population; so, withholding all of the “socialism” scare tactics of true opponents, these private, party requirements would do nothing but boost the overall political morale among the nation’s voters and give America a reason to get more people out to vote.

Why do 45,000 people die every single year because they don’t have access to basic healthcare?

In short, it’s because we do not live in a democracy. Studies coming out of Yale in the past two years have concluded that the will of the people has absolutely no correlation with the policy implemented by Congress; but the ultra-rich have an almost direct correlation between their desires and real-world action by the national legislature. I wonder why this is? Essentially, the people that run this country are allowed to take unlimited campaign contributions from individuals and corporations because of Corporate Person-hood upheld in Citizens United (2010). With this power, the influences of private healthcare companies, medical supply manufacturers, drug companies, and medical loan companies all pay their bribes to politicians for their absence of action and silence on the desperate issue of healthcare in this country.

My passion for changing the healthcare system in the United States stems from my passion for following the path of least intellectual resistance: I’m straightforward, logical, and anyone that disagrees with me NOT on the basis of logic or real scientific evidence is usually met with laughter and condemnation from me. This process would obviously be different if I were an actual elected official, but luckily, I’m an armchair politician and have no impact on legislation other than with my vote for the universally corrupted people in the first place.

It’s just…there’s absolutely no empirical evidence against the implementation of a single-payer, universal healthcare system. Every single nation that scores higher than the United States in healthcare coverage/quality is a nation with a  single-payer system, and all of which serve as examples to which we can compare our own way of doing things and make a change.

It genuinely frustrates me when people, who are otherwise educated in law and political science, demonstrate profound ignorance of the rest of the industrialized world and their almost lack of medical bankruptcies (the number one cause of bankruptcies in the U.S.) and people dying without access to affordable care. I am by no means a public servant nor am I in a field that comes close to that, but what I am sure of is by ability to read. Reading stories like the ones I’ve previously cited in my blogs, I get sick knowing that people in the country, the supposedly greatest country on Earth, don’t get that same level of basic treatment.

I don’t understand people actually thinking that you should suffer in a case where you don’t have the proper exorbitant sums to pay for medical treatment. So, the only option other than paying tens of thousands of dollars for a necessary procedure or course of treatment, is death.

Healthcare is a human right.

The French Parliament is cracking down on both unnecessary costs and suffering. Their system, relying on the overall health of the entire nation to sustain it, is making extra effort to push for lowering risks associated with seeing the doctor. In addition, several public policy proposals are included in this list of possible provisions.

Among these provisions are patient protection efforts, public dissuasion campaigns, and simple helping hands for French citizens.

The helping hands extend from the protection of the worst-off among the population, to easy measures that decrease out-of-pocket expenses for patients that visit a doctor. The French system will eliminate co-payments for regular check-ups, and that little bit of cash spent goes a long way for the people that this law is supposed to protect. Not only that, but the law will also serve as more universal preventative care, sort of like a government-sponsored HMO. This measure has the potential to decrease long-run costs, due to more people having more illnesses and conditions spotted sooner in life. Citizens are also automatically enrolled in a national organ donation registry, which doesn’t affect the average person in the slightest, but greatly increases the donation pool for the injured and sick.

Do you remember hearing stories about government-regulated packaging for tobacco products? The French are doing their own version of that, essentially eliminating the tobacco industry’s power over the addictive marketplace. The main difference between this measure and other nations is that, instead of adding disgusting and dissuasive imagery to the packaging, they only force companies to eliminate their colorful packaging and catchy labels. Measures like these are proven to have significant impact on the smoking/addicted population of a given area, and they also indirectly benefit the health care system; less people addicted to tobacco yields far less people, later in life, that utilize treatment for preventable, long-term ailments.

Among the most admirable of Parliament’s plans are the actions protecting patient privacy and workplace integrity. These include cancer patients’ right to be forgotten from discriminating medical records. Those efforts protect seriously ill patients from being restricted from working full time jobs while they are able-bodied and willing. Digital records are being formed because of the need to have a patient’s records on file at numerous hospitals. A national registry, one the subject of major debate, is to be set up for all hospitals, surgical centers, and emergency rooms throughout the country.

I enjoy reading about nice things like this going on in the world. The United States is no longer the leader in health insurance coverage, and we no longer set examples like this for citizens of more efficient and compassionate nations.

Everyone who’s had a relative slowly pass away has also experienced, or at least seen, the financial aftermath of months of end-of-life treatment. Round-the-clock supervision, specialist visits and opinions, countless tests and screenings, let alone the costs for the medication and the hospital stay itself. This week, I’ll be speaking out of my own family’s necessities and relating it to measures that the French have done to solve problems like these.

I can speak from my own experience that having a dying relative is continually heartbreaking; my grandmother has been going through serious stages of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. For the past four years, she has occupied the same nursing home room that she has shared with numerous other roommates that she has outlived. Aside from the dread and suspense for her inevitable passing, she has also been the subject of great financial stress in my family.

The good news for my grandfather is that the majority of the bills that his wife Janet accrue are covered by the state’s Medicare division. That is only because of her birthday being before a certain date in the 40’s.

The bad news, is well, everything else. The State of Ohio will take my grandfather’s house when he passes away in order to begin paying for a small minority of the costs that my grandmother has unfortunately been ringing up. This is obviously fair, right? The state just itching to take an 87 year old man’s home away from him simply because his dying wife was too expensive.

Well that was sad enough, wasn’t it?

The solution for this genre of tragedy lies in the French attitude towards healthcare. In most of Europe, the process of dying is not seen as an unbearable burden, it is seen as an event whose expenses must be ignored in order to ensure the maximum comfort among the family and the patient.

The French national health care plan, and especially its palliative care measures, were significantly expanded back in December of 2015. It spread readily available care to further rural regions of the nation, as well as raised the income bracket for those who would be able to access it. Now, families worth the equivalent of “just” one or two million dollars would not have to shell out an eight or a quarter of their wealth to care for their terminal or bedridden family members. This measure protects a majority of millionaires’ wealth in the event of a family emergency, but also allows the millions of French citizens to continue having no stress over finances at the end of their lives, because one person in one bad situation can easily take the entirety of a family’s earnings and wipe it out of the bank.

The latter scenario is one that thousands of American families are experiencing right now, in the “greatest country on Earth.”

My passion blog for the upcoming semester will follow the typical person living in two different countries, France and the United States, from birth until death. I’ll explore the discrepancies in healthcare between most other modern European nations and America, highlighting changes that need to be made in order to make healthcare for our citizens more affordable and accessible.

My first post begins at birth, and the events leading up to it. Already, the French baby has a distinct advantage over the American in terms of life expectancy. The Parisian can expect to live a life of almost 83 years, on average, whereas the New Yorker plans on surviving just under 79 years. I’ll eventually show the differences in quality of life that cause the 4 year gap in future blogs.

We will follow the experiences of two pregnant women. One is a French citizen in Paris, the other an American woman living in New York. These women are friends that share their prenatal experiences with one another, and the experiences are highlighted in this NPR article. Like the early advantage of lifespan, the French mother already is taken care of far more than the American.

Since the onset of her pregnancy, the French woman has seen numerous home visits from nurses. In most of Europe, a pregnant woman is to be taken care of. She receives weeks or months off from work on paid maternity leave to rest and prepare to give birth.

The main costs of childbirth are the ones incurred during the visit to the hospital to actually deliver the child. Anesthesia, materials, labor (pun intended) costs, and the room fees add up. Fortunately, 70-90% of the costs of these visits are covered under the National Insurance program for French citizens, and the rest is typically covered by a small supplemental private insurance plan that most French citizens opt into. These plans are purchased from private healthcare providers and are heavily regulated by the French government in order to guarantee affordable coverage outside of the main national plan.

Quite the opposite happens in the United States.

The American woman had numerous complications during her pregnancy, therefore accruing thousands of dollars of hospital and specialist costs to sort them out. When she tried to get insurance through her husband’s policy at work, they furiously turned her down, stating that they “don’t insure a house on fire.” Preexisting conditions apparently include being pregnant and needing care. In America, that is a legal act, but only justifiable to the money earned in the transaction.

The for-profit motives in American healthcare degrade mothers’ quality of life and force unnecessary financial peril upon poor mothers. The French system of a public option for healthcare, especially during childbirth, is the main reason why infant mortality is almost twice as high, at 6.1 deaths per 1000 births, compared to France’s 2.9.

To all of our humorous misfortunes, I’ll be changing my passion blog topic for the upcoming semester of CAS 138.

As strongly as I feel about the nation’s gun problem, it really is a simple debate. I’ve covered almost every common argument from the left and the right. Now only the important minutia, like wordings in federal and state statutes, remain; however, it is boring to both the reader and myself. I plan on switching to advocating for either single-payer healthcare or tuition-free public college in Spring 2018.

For my last passion blog on this topic, I’ll discuss the discrepancy between gun rights advocates and, well, reality, regarding crime in other nations and how it relates to firearms.

Often, gun control opponents will detest any legislation of the sort, citing nations with heavy gun control that still have persistent violent crime. They often cite an abundance of terrorism, assaults, stabbings, bludgeonings, the sort. What these folks miss is the fact that these kinds of crimes, committed using knives, swords, bats, trucks, fists, are all far less lethal means of injuring people than guns.

We don’t have more crime, our crime is far deadlier.

A further analysis of general gun injuries shows that suicide attempts with guns are over 96% effective, whereas cutting and poison techniques are only 5.1% and 7.4% effective, respectively.

This means people fail to kill themselves with other means and are able to be caught and have counseling and therapy after their experiences, all leading to fewer people dying. An article from The Week reports on how suicide is a “transitory phenomenon — people who survive one attempt generally don’t go on to kill themselves.” They’re able to see how close to dying they were, decide on their own that they’re scared and dissuaded by the concept, and they ultimately don’t continue attempts. Those that do are too far gone to begin with, and need more aggressive means of intervention instead of being physically treated at a hospital.

A measure that historically showed a reduction in gun suicides was Australia’s federal gun buyback program. Implemented in 1996 after the horrific Port Arthur massacre, weapons were purchased from regular citizens in an attempt to stop potential mass shooters in the future, but it also inadvertently caused a decrease in gun suicides, presumably for aforementioned reasons.

As far as trends go, we already know (partially because of my amazing blogging) that more guns in a region equate to far more incidents of gun violence in those regions. Since suicides are such a massive portion of gun incidents, it is logical to conclude that fewer guns in a region also equates to fewer suicides, or at least fewer fatal suicide attempts and more nonfatal ones.

My last passion blog has been a sort of mix-up between the two potential topics that I had when we were choosing. Helping people, or political topics? Turns out that they’re two sides of the same coin. It’s been a great first semester with you all.

The American public has a decision to make: do we want to ensure plentiful safety and prosperity or do we want to uphold the Second Amendment?

“Why can’t we do both?”

The simple truth is that this nation’s sprawling heap of firearms, and the ideologies used to distribute them, are in direct contradiction with the supposed first priority of safety. We cannot have this many guns and be safe. Harvard Law School’s Kate Mauser cites the common charts: a linear, positive trend on gun deaths per 100,000 people vs the percentage of gun ownership by household, and the same vs guns per 100 people (both curves show the same trends).

The Harvard School of Public Health also compiled a meta-analysis of gun violence archives and studies to come to four massive and debate-ending conclusions:

1. In general, where there are more guns, there is more homicide.
2. In nations with more guns, there is more homicide.
3. In U.S. state with more guns, there is more homicide.
4. In regions where more guns are present, there are more police officers shot and killed.

Surprisingly, I’m not going to reference a mass shooting this week. Even though they serve as staunch evidence in favor of assault weapons bans and high capacity magazine bans, they still only represent a tiny fraction of one percent of the total homicides in this country, even though they by far receive the most publicity.

My blog today will bring light to the tragedies that “only” get local news coverage. Small, constant incidents of gun accidents, suicides, and homicides that affect “only” a handful of people are what drastically differentiate the United State from the rest of the world.

As of writing this blog at the tail end of November, the Gun Violence Archive records over fourteen thousand deaths by firearms in the United States. 677 of those were children aged 0-11 with accidents being the main source of their demise. Almost 29,000 people have been injured by guns this year alone.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of civilians owning weapons is personal defense. Gun owners consider themselves lawless cowboys or independent, strong people that can defend themselves against a threat at a moment’s notice; the evidence, however, shows that less than two thousand of the gun incidents were innocent citizens defending themselves. Furthermore, the paranoia of gun owners regarding situations like these is not based in any fact at all. An ABC News piece on the reaction times of concealed carry holders in mass shootings shows that unsuspecting defenders of “life and liberty” in these situations frequently get shot and killed before firing a single shot in retaliation in the direction of the perpetrator.

With minuscule numbers of incidents ending favorably for the innocent defenders overshadowed by the tens of thousands of injuries and deaths every single year, the debate is over for the question of more guns equaling more peace and security. It is empirically, demonstrably, scientifically false.