By: Charlotte Smith
Recently I have found myself thinking about issues I have never really focused on before. Maybe it’s my age, not that I’m old, or maybe it’s my line of work, or maybe a problem presents itself in my line of vision and I can’t stop thinking, maybe I can do something to change it.
Speaking from personal experience and from reading headlines, our Healthcare System in America needs a drastic overhaul. According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the United States Per Capita Spending on Healthcare is more than double over other developed countries.
If we are spending more, why are we receiving less. Why are our Veterans asked to seek healthcare on YouTube? Why are the people who worked all their lives receiving minimal benefits while someone who hasn’t contributed to society receives any benefit they desire, some even received phones from our government.
The insurance companies just keep getting richer. The top five for-profit insurance companies’ CEOs each took home over ten million dollars in salaries in the year 2014 according to Fierce Health Payer. The Affordable Care Act, is not affordable and in my opinion is only making the insurance companies richer.
Let’s look a little more acutely at a different healthcare issue causing another huge devastating impact on our society. Prescription drug abuse has been on the rise in Bladen County, in North Carolina and all of America according to the N.C. Department of Justice. Data from the N.C. Division of Public Health reports more than 1,000 people die in North Carolina every year due to prescription drug overdoses. More Americans die from prescription overdoses every year than motor vehicle wrecks according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Talk to a police officer or a social worker. Ask them what they have seen prescription drugs do to our residents and their families. It is a problem we need to fix. The sooner the better, but most of our elected leaders want to bicker about party lines, what political party is at fault, and even stir up controversies because they know it will keep a lot of the voters divided and distracted.
A lot of citizens are not educated about what is going on in our government. A substantial amount of our voting population agree with their affiliated political party or some Political Action Committee only because it’s what they have always done. Some never realize there is a lot of backdoor politics going on and our system is so corrupt it will take a lot of honest, hardworking people to fix it.
Look at our education system for example. North Carolina passed the Lottery to help with education. When the Lottery was first passed, 35 percent of the net profits were suppose to go to education funding in our state from what I read on House Bill 1023 at the NCLEG.net website.
The state education system is only receiving 100 million dollars from the Lottery. That amount of money may sound like a lot of money to the average person, but it is only about 20 percent of the net profit for the North Carolina Education Lottery and does not go very far according to our education leaders.
You can see exactly how much Bladen County received and all the other counties in our home state at the NC Lottery website. Now not only do we have people with gambling problems who waste money on their addiction rather than pay for their family’s needs, our education system is not receiving the funds our politicians promised us it would if this lottery was passed in North Carolina.
When I start thinking about all these issues and other similar ways our systems have been compromised I wonder, “What can I do to fix it? Who do I know that is smart enough to help fix it?”
Contact all the elected officals you can in our county, state and federal government. Contact someone running for a public office. Let your voice be heard. I know I’m not the only one pondering the progress we are making and wanting to really make a difference.
Peace and love,
Charlotte Smith
(910)876-5393
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