Health Care Crisis

I just saw a story on the news about people spending 3 hours in an ER waiting room. One was having seizures and the other had a potentially fatal blood clot in her leg. Hospital administrators apologized while on ER doctor said things are only going to get worse because the hospitals are understaffed and underfunded. Apparently, there's a threat of one hospital in the area closing down due to lack of funding, which will overburden the remaining area hospitals.

I think this is a direct result of not enough people having medical insurance. People without insurance don't go to the doctor until they are in crisis and then they go to the ER. These people are harder to treat because their problem has had time to fester. That raises costs.

I also think the health care crisis and other problems can be linked to overcrowding on earth. Quite a while back when I was in college we read of a study social scientists did with rats. There were two rat habitats: the first had population control measures in place and the second was allowed to procreate uncontrollably.

Scientists noted that in the first habitat rats were kinder to each other, they helped one another, brought food to the sick ones that were unable to get to the food area, the rats were polite, etc. (I don't know how one judges polite behavior in rats but apparently it can be done.)

In the second habitat, where population raged out of control, the rats displayed agressive behavior, they committed rat "crimes" like killing the weaker members, stealing and horde food, randomly attacking one another, etc. Also, I think the rats in the second habitat had more health problems.

Every time I hear about random violence or problems in the ER I think there are just too many of us on this planet. But who among us is willing to lose ourselves or our friends and family to help reduce the human population? I mean, there's nothing to be done for it except convince people to stop procreating and I doubt that's feasible.

There's also a growing divide between the haves and have nots in our society. A lot of middle income folks are falling into the have nots category as the cost of everything rises.

I suppose every generation forsees doom and gloom and the end of everything in their life-time. I suppose we survived the Iran-Iraq war and gas crisis of the 70s and I guess we'll survive this one; if people stop driving SUVs. It was a lot easier to be optimistic when we were younger.

Clearly the key to my babbling on this blog is to keep me up late and piss me off. :)