Does Health Care Measure Up? The United States government has been considering health care reform since the 1930’s. At that time, Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t press his ideas on Congress because he did not want to risk his other New Deal proposals. But other presidents, including Harry Truman in 1949 and Richard Nixon in 1971, have tried to introduce some type of health care reform, enjoying varying measures of success. Why do we still need reform? Currently, the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not have some type of national health care policy. According to a 2003 L.A. Times poll, “70% [of the respondents] consider the current [health care] system unsound,” and the President has made health care one of his main policy issues. Many states, such as Florida and Oregon, have initiated their own plans to increase health care availability to their residents. Yet, whether we all agree on the type of reform needed, or if it is needed at all, we do need to address some issues critical to many inner-city and rural residents. Do we have enough health care providers in rural areas? Is enough emergency care available in inner cities? Is affordable insurance coverage available to offset the cost of health care? Janice Castro says in The American Way of Health that “there are twice as many physicians now as there were about 20 years ago,” but today only about 30% of those doctors are General Practitioners. With the number of General Practitioners decreasing, the competition among cities and towns to attract these doctors becomes quite intense. Some hospitals hire recruiting firms to find doctors for them, while others pay between $1500 and $2250 for recruiting booths at annual me… … middle of paper … …for many serious conditions, such as AIDS. These sad facts lead to the conclusion that our health care system is definitely not serving the needs of many rural and inner-city residents. The combination of the shortage of General Practitioners and uncompensated care increases the strain on already overburdened hospitals, forcing many to close or restrict services the their customers, and in turn forcing medical costs up and raising again insurance premiums. All of this leads to a rise in the number in uninsured and underinsured Americans. These are financial and social costs that everyone ends up paying eventually, usually in the form of higher taxes. Perhaps now is the time for the government to initiate some type of health care reform targeted for rural and inner-city areas, instead of just considering it once more and passing it on for another year.
Othello – It Ranks High or Low?
Othello – It Ranks High or Low?
William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello has been given high marks by some critics and low marks by others. Let us elaborate on this problem in this essay.
In the volume Shakespeare and Tragedy John Bayley explains why the modern audience feels so exasperated when viewing this play:
But Othello is not freed by this sense of his own situation: he has been caught in it as if in a snare. And instead of being freed by the hero’s consciousness of things, and sharing it with him, we are forced to stand outside Othello’s delusion. The play grips us in its own artifice of incomprehension. And for most onlookers, nowadays, the sensation seems to be more exasperating than it is either thrilling or painful. (200-201)
The feeling of exasperation on the part of the audience is not universal. Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes explains the factor that made Othello significant among the tragedies of its time:
The Moor goes to the task of killing his wife in the name of justice;
Thy bed, lust-stain’d, shall with lust’s blood be spotted.
And in the second scene, the scene of the murder, he cries again as he looks upon the sleeping Desdemona and kisses her:
Oh, balmy breath, thou dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword!
It is this insistence upon the passion which makes men try to take the place of God, and by private revenge execute the laws of God that makes Othello significant in the tragedy of its time. Othello sees his acts as the expression of justice, worked out in the most perfect balance of deed and punishment. (172)
If the justice aspect of private revenge gave the play popularity then, what gives it fame today? Othello would appear to have a beauty about it which is hard to match – thus ranking the play high. Helen Gardner in “Othello: A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune” touches on this beauty which enables this play to stand above the other tragedies of the Bard:
Among the tragedies of Shakespeare Othello is supreme in one quality: beauty. Much of its poetry, in imagery, perfection of phrase, and steadiness of rhythm, soaring yet firm, enchants the sensuous imagination. This kind of beauty Othello shares with Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra; it is a corollary of the theme which it shares with them.
