HW 26

Some insights:
-Many people could live but health insurance companies deny care for them and they die
-Other countries have universal health care and do better than us and yet the U.S. refuses to switch to universal healthcare
-Death is hidden in hospital and separated from everything else
-Social norms around illness and dying

I think the sources that were the most helpful for me understanding the culture's dominant social practices around illness and dying have been: having Beth come in to talk to us, the Sicko movie, and just talking about ideas in class with other people. Beth helped me understand because it was her personal experience with sickness and dying with someone very close to her. I haven't had this experience so it helped me understand what it's like. The Sicko movie helped me understand how our country, government, and health insurance companies deal with sickness and dying. This helped me understand because it showed me what's happening in the bigger picture. And lastly just our discussions in class helped me because there were a lot of social norms around illness and dying that I didn't really think about and other students brought ideas up in my mind.

Some questions and areas I think are most important to explore in the final weeks of the unit are how the social norms around sickness and dying came to be. There has to be some reason why we have this certain way of dealing with sickness and and death so it would be interesting to see why people act like this when people are sick and dying. Also I would like to know how sickness and dying can be approached in a better way and how it can not be so separated from the society. I'm not really sure how we could explore these topics/questions though.