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There has been so much in the news lately related to health care.  Since it is the field that I most likely want to build my career around, I think a lot about the situation we are faced with. Private insurance is great for doctors- they actually get paid and can perform the best diagnostic tests and can use the best medical equipment to treat their patients. Unfortunately, someone has to take care of the poor people, and they are often the ones with the worst medical conditions. Due to their poor diets or lifestyle choices, or their lack of general care on a regular basis, these people usually seek medical treatment when they are on the brink of a medical disaster.  With the cost of malpractice rising by the day, and the amount that doctors are paid by government run health care programs staying stagnant, or decreasing, it is no wonder that no one wants to treat people without insurance. It is not all people at the bottom of society’s ladder that find themselves without health insurance.  Middle class families with good jobs find themselves without health benefits if their employer doesn’t help subsidize plans or if they can’t afford to pay out of pocket for a private plan which can cost more than $10,000 for a family of four. I believe we should find a way to get everyone decent healthcare. It would avert a lot of the money that we pump into the system that basically keeps the severely ill alive when if they had better care all along, they wouldn’t end up near death every six months. The ER  has replaced the role of primary care physicians and it is draining our system and our doctors. It has been the case for a while now, that America does not produce enough doctors to sustain its population. The reason we haven’t suffered to this point, is that we have allowed a large influx of foreign doctors to fill the gaps.  However, it is often the case that doctors trained abroad are treated as if their training is not as good as American bred doctors and they are often placed in lower ranked hospitals- often public hospitals. So here is the catch, we do not want to produce more American doctors because it is a) expensive but more importantly, it allows us to use foreign doctors to fill the positions that American doctors don’t want to take. Doctors at public hospitals are often paid less and work more. More of their patients are uninsured and more of their patients are severely ill because they can not afford primary care. A lot of foreign doctors from the Philippines or India for example, still make more money as a doctor in the United States than they could abroad, and that is why, we haven’t heard them complain that much. Obama’s plan for health care calls for more primary care physicians, which is a great idea, except that he also came to the realization that there are not enough doctors to fulfill his plan. No one wants to go into primary care- it’s not rewarding.

There have been several proposals of different ways to raise the billions of dollars needed just to keep Medicaid and Medicare alive through the decade.  Proposals include the soda tax, the alcoholic beverage tax, taxing people who get health insurance from their employers, etc. These are not real plans. First off, the soda tax is ridiculous. While I am all about combating obesity and diabetes, taxing soda is ridiculous. I drink soda sometimes and I weigh 100 pounds. If you charged my 25 cents more to buy the soda, I still would, and so would the lady who weighs 400 pounds. I think health insurance should be like car insurance. Everyone has to take responsibility for themselves. It is not soda that is bad for you. It is the AMOUNT of soda that you drink which is something only you can control. The same goes for alcohol. Both of these things in moderation are not bad. SO lets say you have health insurance- just like care insurance you would start with a rate that fits your age category and personal history/experience. It is your decision how you are going to treat your body, and like a vehicle, the more you break it, the higher your insurance goes. I am not talking about breaking bones and being careless, or getting a disease you can’t control like cancer(unless it’s lung cancer). But I am talking about making the conscious decision to smoke, or do drugs, or be an alcoholic, or eat McDonald’s everyday with a large soda and never exercise. Those are things in your control and they hurt your body.You can’t hide the damage you are doing to your body for long and people who don’t take care of themselves should have to contribute more to the health care system than people who do. On the other hand, if someone with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes decides to change his or her life style and eat better and exercise, they should be rewarded for that. If people don’t have to take individual responsibility for their own actions, they tend not to care, even if it’s about their own health.

We spend BILLIONS of dollars each year treating people from smoking related illnesses, heart disease, and complications from diabetes type II. Smoking is the number one cause of death from a preventable disease in the United States and yet no one has suggested to tax smokers more. Yes, cigarettes cost almost $10 in NY, but they cost about $3 everywhere else.  Why? Because our government doesn’t really care. They rather appease tobacco lobbyists than do what is best for their citizens AND for their health care system. And if our government doesn’t really care about the health of it’s citizens, it will continue to avoid training more doctors and providing people of lower economic status with inferior care.

Taxing people who receive health benefits from their jobs doesn’t really make anything better either. I receive almost $10,000 in health benefits from my job, but if I had to pay taxes on that money, I would just take it as income instead of health benefits. A lot of healthy people in their 20’s and 30’s would do the same. So then you would have even more people who are uninsured, and those are the people you want to be insured since young people don’t go to the doctor often and they balance out the illnesses of the elderly. In order for everyone to have health insurance, everyone needs to be involved- the young, the old, the sick, the healthy. The young will pay for the elderly and the extremely sick now, but one day, when they have children, or later one when they are old, they will receive the care they deserve. And for those republicans who think that government should just stay out of it- I urge you to go to the doctor or pick up a prescription and not use your insurance card, just to get a glimpse of how much things actually cost.

I am in my quarter life crisis and I’m not shamed. I used to just feel lost and confused about everything in my life and was unable to make “moves” towards any sort of cohesive goal.  I have recently learned though that there is a name for my syndrome and it’s called the quarter life crisis. Eyeweekly.com describes this phenomenon to perfection. They have worded the story of my life more eloquently and precisely than I ever could:

This phenomenon, known as the “Quarterlife Crisis,” is as ubiquitous as it is intangible. Unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedom and free-for-all individuation. They can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want.

You can’t see me, but I am still in shock that someone I have never met, who is not even talking about me, could describe my feelings so well. I try to exlpain this concept to my parents and my boyfriend over and over but it seems to be beyond them. Although I am a year shy of my quarter century bday, I definitely felt the pressure of life after turning 24. I life with my boyfriend, who runs his own company at the age of 25. He is pretty serious all of the time and thinks about work 27 hours out of the day. He is doing really well and I am proud of him and happy that he is so inspired and does something he loves, but it is also hard not to feel like a failure in comparison. It’s not that I have no direction in life, I would say I have a vague direction, a blurry map per se. But my whole youth there was a distinct plan to follow. I went to a really intense and competitive high school where everything seemed like it was planned out to the T. You always had something to do, something to strive for. There was always a test or a paper or a play or dance lessons or SAT class or a presentation. Then one day it was all over and I wound up in a small liberal arts college with people playing frisbee on the grass and teachers smoking pot with their students. There were slight guidelines and class requirements, but they mostly involved modern dance and creative writing. Not that I missed the mental breakdown that was high school, but I did somewhat long for more predictable structure and pressure to push myself to perfection.

When I went in to college, I had no plan but I figured it would come to me by the end of 4 years. Approximately fifteen minutes later I was standing on stage with someone handing me a diploma. I graduated top of my class and for that one day, I was really proud of myself.  I felt like I had accomplished something.  I hadn’t quite solidified a life plan but I knew I was going to work in a jewelry store for the summer then start my job in a research lab in the fall… This was two years ago. I still work in the lab and although I like my job a lot now, I felt otherwise for the first year I was here. Apparently this is a product of the quarter life crisis:

“Generally, being happy at work is huge part of having a happy life, and a cool and interesting job is one that leaves you fulfilled, not bitter, or not with that existential career angst that you were meant for ‘more than this.’”

I think for most educated people, “real life” is slightly disappointing at first. I was ready to give up the college partying for a job that I was passionate about, something that would stimulate my brain and put all of those hard years to use. Unfortunately, I felt like no one in my office cared about anything. Maybe they were already burned out. For a long time I subsisted on scrabulous, gchatting, facebook and reading the superficial.com. I took an hour lunch and in the afternoon I would read. I got through Love in the Time of Cholera and the Bonfire of the Vanitied (approx 700 pages of Tom Wolfe’s flowery bs) in 2 months. I did the times crossword everyday and usually took a nap around 3. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew it wasn’t that.  I knew I was “better and smarter” than that.  I looked for other jobs but the thing you quickly learn as an adult, is that good health benefits speak louder than personal happiness.

The Quarterlife Crisis remains largely a middle-class, Stuff White People Like kind of problem, and usually manifests itself where certain problematic social norms used to exist, like who had access to education and interesting work, and who was allowed adventure and self-determination. The twentysomething void is, in large part, due to the important evolution of sexual equality, and when sex, relationships, and family-building changes, everything does.

I am all about gender equality and I definitely do my share for my sex. But sometimes I think it would be nice to have fewer choices. My career choices would include nurse, or teacher, and I would choose nurse. I am 24 so I would probably be married by now instead of living in sin, and I wouldn’t be wondering about all of these BS problems that I have in my relationship like is he the one? Are we going to be together forever? WHy doesn’t he fold and put away his laundry? Does he really love me? Things would be a little more cut and dry.

I spent the first six months of “real life” trying to find myself or figure out who I was.  I partied a lot with my best friend and I feel like we were regressing in age as a way of fighting the inevitability of buckling down and becoming adults.  I hung out on the lower east side and all of a sudden became a pseudo-hipster or maybe just a wanna be. I wanted to fit in somewhere, I just wasn’t sure where that was. I am grateful that my parents are so supportive of me- both financially and emotionally-but I definitely do feel that they expect something great of me and they are just waiting for me to take action. They have always told me how smart I am, and this whole notion that you can be anything and do anything gets overwhelming really fast. As Eye weekly put it:

Having so much — youth, ability, independence — can feel like the worst possible scenario.

The one thing I can say, is that on my 24th birthday I decided that I was going to be happy and I was going to start moving. I made some goals and I’ve gotten to a few. I wanted to be an extra on gossip girl and I did it (in under a month too). I wanted to decide a career path and I am 90% sure I have chosen the right one. I got a paper published and I am presenting at a conference in June. I started exercising again and I feel great. Maybe that’s all you can hope for at this stage in the game. Babysteps. Small achievements. Little everyday things that you can be proud of yourself for and that send you in the right direction, or any direction.