Post 5

The 5th chapter in Nonprofit Nation was helpful for me in determining what services fall under the Health Care sub-sector. I was surprised to learn that nursing homes and all of the disease charities were apart of Health Care, because I guess I never really thought about which category those services belonged to. As a whole I feel like a have a better understanding of the central role nonprofit health care plays, both directly and indirectly.
The first article of the four additional readings that I read was ADD study. The first thing that struck me was the quote "If you want to stir up worry in the public, and you've got the advertising dollars to do it you can turn almost anything into a disease." I pretty much agree with Dr. Arthur Caplan. Another comment I was intrigued by was about going to Germany, Japan or Britain and not finding adults with ADD. I agree with the article that many people rely on medication to help them lead a more normal life, but I feel like due to advertising and all of the exposure to it, it's become a mental thing where people are simply just believing they have these disorders like ADD. I think its safe to say that many people benefit from the pills used to focus and dull the effects of ADD, but I also think it's pretty messed up that these drugs companies just market these drugs as pills to make you do better in maintaing relationships, jobs, etc. to people who simply have normal habits like procrastination and personality traits like shyness. I feel that it's two sided, but there is definite danger making medical care a for-profit operation. I personally would feel like I would trust doctors better if medical care became a solely nonprofit operation.
The packers article was really interesting. I'm not a huge football fan or follower of the NFL, but the article displayed a good point about what football used to be that isn't now, but how the Packers have held onto the tradition in sport and not the billions of dollars that make all the other NFL teams more of a business than a sport. The Packers are a wonderful and successful business and the statistics in the article show that they are quite charitable as well. I think its cool that so many people look forward to volunteering in any event that the Packers are looking for volunteers.
Although "The value of nonprofit healthcare" didn't exactly provide a second opinion and was mostly one sided, I was able to gather a lot of information I didn't already know about nonprofit medical operations. I agree that the nonprofit sector is "society's safety net". I was not aware that Blue Cross was the first insurance plan either. I think this article provided a lot of good points as to why and how nonprofit health care systems operate more successfully than for profit, although the article like I previously mentioned was pretty much one sided. What I got out of the article though was that I think the popularity of nonprofit health care systems will rise if people became more aware of how to distinguish for-profit from nonprofit, and are informed of its successes and benefits. The merging in Michigan article was helpful in understanding the differences from medical employees points of view. According to the people who know DMC the best, it's longtime employees, the merge will bring in money to make DMC better than what it is, and expand on it's previous successes, while continuing to support every economic class. There are obvious differences between for-profit and nonprofit medical hospitals, but I don't think a hospital being for-profit or nonprofit can ultimately determine whether a hospital or medical center is a really good medical facility or not.