Student reaction paper on health care reform

            Over the past several weeks of class, there has been a significant amount of focus on health care and the reform. I found a new interest in finding out what would happen with the reform because so many other students in the class seemed to have an opinion on the subject. I was curious as to what other programs could be affected. After doing some research, and after a twenty minute segment where President Obama explained what his program would offer, I realized that I really needed to make more of an effort to understand policies that are going to affect me.  In fact, I recently studied a woman named Bertha Capen Reynolds, who stated that social workers needed to show their concern through political activity and that particular writing assignment just reinforced it. I am frustrated that I keep coming across topics in this class and I say, “wow, I need to focus more energy into really finding out what is going with various policies and bills that are being passed,” and I never actually make the effort.

Although I was happy to learn about all the money that was going towards prevention programs, I was really impressed to find out that the healthcare reform will allow for an extension of dependent coverage for adult children up to the age of 26. If it had not been for this class, I would not have gone out of my way to see this new resource that is available for me. I know that a huge reason why policy class is important in our social work education is because it focuses on empowering our clients and I agree with an article I read along the lines that talks about how the reform will increase American’s access to medical services which will in fact empower people who previously faced barriers to medical resources.

With it being the end of the semester, I have more and more work due so I feel overwhelmed at times with all the required readings. I feel like I can never really be caught up because there are always more resource links being put up to look at. I actually really liked this past week's discussion board posts because I felt like I could post my opinion and everyone wasn’t looking at me. It was really nice to read everyone’s personal stories about how they were affected by health care. I always wish I had more of an opinion on some of our topics we cover in class but I constantly feel like I am not educated enough on the subjects to be putting my opinion out in the open for the class to judge.