Part four in a six part series cov­er­ing health care sys­tems around the world

The name of Canada’s health care sys­tem has been one of the most abused and mis­con­strued of any other coun­try through­out the recent debates sur­round­ing health care reform in the US. They are often invoked as the coun­try that embod­ies social­ism and long waits.

While yes, Canada does favor poli­cies that are more “social­ist” than America, and yes, there may be longer waits for some ser­vices, this pic­ture is too much of a gen­er­al­iza­tion for a sys­tem that has been around since the early 1960s and was voted in by an over­whelm­ing major­ity of the Canadian parliament.

The model of health care that Canada uses is the National Health Insurance model. This sys­tem is also used by other coun­tries such as Cuba. This model bor­rows aspects of both the Bismarck model and the Beveridge model, both of which were cov­ered in this series in pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Torch.

Thomas Clement Douglas was the man who first brought the idea of uni­ver­sal cov­er­age to Canada. He had a knee injury as a child, and when his finan­cially trou­bled fam­ily moved from Scotland to Canada, the only rea­son he was able to receive surgery for his both­ered knee was because he hap­pened to have the offer of being a sub­ject of an exper­i­men­tal sur­gi­cal technique.

This pro­ce­dure was a suc­cess, but Douglas was wor­ried by the fact that at that time only a wealthy per­son could get such a surgery and many fam­i­lies were left out. He wanted to make sure that every­one had equal access to health care. He per­ceived health­care to be a neces­sity to life regard­less of class or age or income.

This idea was fleshed out into a gov­ern­ment pro­gram in Saskatchewan, which was so suc­cess­ful that the rest of the coun­try demanded the same. The basics of the sys­tem are that it is funded through tax payer money and any cit­i­zen can walk in to receive ser­vice with­out pay­ing a bill at the end.

The five main points included in the Canadian Health Act of 1984 include pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion (not-for-profit), com­pre­hen­sive­ness, uni­ver­sal­ity, porta­bil­ity and acces­si­bil­ity. This free ser­vice only counts for “med­ically nec­es­sary” ser­vices. Private insur­ance, which is optional and very cheap and often cov­ered by employ­ers, cov­ers things such as pri­vate hos­pi­tal rooms, pre­scrip­tions and child birth classes, among others.

On the doctor’s side of things, there is an expected dif­fer­ence from America’s sys­tem. A fam­ily doc­tor in Canada will gen­er­ally make about half as much as an American one would. An exam­ple cited in T.R. Reid’s “The Healing of America” shows a Canadian doc­tor who is still able to drive a BMW and belong to a coun­try club. While they may not hold quite as high of a sta­tus as in the U.S., they seem to still live an above-average lifestyle.

The para­dox in com­par­ing our sys­tem with that of our friends to the north is that while they have a com­pletely gov­ern­ment run sys­tem, they still spend far less than we do.

This type of approach to health care is for­eign idea to Americans. We do not live this kind of lifestyle. Americans are staunch indi­vid­u­al­ists who do not have the same sense of respon­si­bil­ity over their fel­low cit­i­zens that many other coun­tries do.

The under­ly­ing argu­ment that I have made through­out this series of arti­cles is that America should be able to make some type of effec­tive reform to use our money that is already put toward health care more effi­ciently. I don’t think that a sin­gle payer sys­tem will be accepted by most Americans, but a major­ity has spo­ken out in favor of reform.

We need to get past petty argu­ments and mis­con­cep­tions of inter­na­tional sys­tems so that we can remain indi­vid­u­al­ists, but still pro­vide health care (pub­lic or pri­vate) for every American.

Editor’s Note: This arti­cle is part of a series, to view the rest of the arti­cles, visit the links below:

Joanna Westover died on Monday, October 19, 2009.

Joanna Westover, a Ferris stu­dent and Big Rapids res­i­dent, passed away unex­pect­edly on Monday, October 19 at the age of 22.

She was in her fourth year at Ferris and study­ing restau­rant and food indus­try man­age­ment. She left behind a fam­ily includ­ing lov­ing par­ents Daniel and Patricia Westover, and three broth­ers, Douglas, Daniel and Jonathan.

Westover was a life­long Big Rapids res­i­dent who attended the First Baptist Church of Big Rapids for many years. Her funeral ser­vice was held on Friday, October 23 at 11 a.m. at the First Baptist Church.

The stu­dent was later pro­nounced dead at the Mecosta County Medical Center. Public safety offi­cials are cur­rently work­ing to con­tact the fam­ily of the victim.

Local and cam­pus author­i­ties responded to the acci­dent shortly after it occurred. A police offi­cer on the scene con­firmed that the acci­dent was fatal. Traffic in the sur­round­ing area was rerouted.

Ferris Department of pub­lic safety offi­cials, in addi­tion to local city police worked together on the scene.

Continue to fol­low the Torch online, as well as on twit­ter (@fsutorch) and our newly cre­ated tum­blr account for the lat­est news.

Students, com­mu­nity mem­bers come together to cure cancer

Joel Lawwell, senior in account­ing and com­puter infor­ma­tion sys­tems, got more than his two to three serv­ings of dairy on Saturday as he con­sumed seven con­tain­ers of yogurt to sup­port breast can­cer awareness.

“It’s painful, slightly deli­cious and when you get to the end and your body is telling you to stop, you just can’t quit,” said Lawwell. “I like yogurt because of the nutri­tional value, and my neigh­bor told me it was for a good cause,” he said.

Lawwell came in sec­ond for the com­pe­ti­tion, and the win­ner, Jake Larry, suc­cess­fully con­sumed 14 con­tain­ers of yogurt.

The event, spon­sored by Zeta Tau Alpha Sorority, was just one in a series of events the orga­ni­za­tion has planned and hosted through­out October in order to raise aware­ness and money for breast cancer.

Aaron Lodes, fundrais­ing chair for ZTA, said this was a very suc­cess­ful month for Zeta Tau Alpha in their efforts to raise money and aware­ness for breast cancer.

“I am so proud of the suc­cess that we have all had, the spirit and enthu­si­asm is spread­ing through­out the cam­pus and com­mu­nity,” said Lodes.

The out­pour­ing of sup­port is expected to con­tinue through this last week of October, which is offi­cially rec­og­nized as National Breast Cancer Awareness month.

The ‘90s marked the golden days of Nickelodeon cartoons

When I reflect back on my child­hood, a pleas­ant mem­ory that comes to mind is watch­ing Nickelodeon car­toons back in the ‘90s.

In the past week, I’ve been in a nos­tal­gic mood. I’ve been watch­ing YouTube videos of Nickelodeon pro­mos and the com­mer­cials. The ones that would run just before “All That” came on. “All That” was the orig­i­nal Saturday Night Live for kids and, I believe one, of the great­est shows of the ’90s, along with “The Amanda Show”, “Rugrats”, “The Angry Beavers” and many more.

Who can for­get the catchy promo phrase “Nick, Nick, Nick, Nickelodeon!”? I sure can’t. Remember the green slime? Kenan and Kel and their orange soda? “Nick News with Linda Ellerbee” was my prime news source. Oh, and Melissa Joan Hart pre-“Sabrina the Teenage Witch” in “Clarissa Explains It All”.

Recently, a friend of mine and I were dis­cussing how great ‘90s Nickelodeon tele­vi­sion shows truly were. In our dis­cus­sion, we pon­dered why the tele­vi­sion shows and car­toons cur­rently aired today are not as appeal­ing or catchy as they were in the 1990s. One con­cept I’ve come to terms with is that many of the clas­sic “Nicktoons” had an edge to them.

One show in par­tic­u­lar that had edge along with humor and was absolutely a bit provoca­tive at times was “Ren and Stimpy”, which aired on the Nickelodeon net­work from 1991–1996. I won­der if it was that show that opened up the door for future shows to dis­play a bit of “toi­let” humor and sex­ual innu­en­dos. As a child watch­ing a show that was pri­mar­ily tar­geted for older audi­ences, I have to admit I was quite enter­tained by the deroga­tory, raunchy humor of the series.

The group of quirky ani­mals in “Rocko’s Modern Life” is another clas­sic. This is another great show embed­ded with sex­ual innu­en­dos and odd, sur­real moments. The writ­ers and pro­duc­ers of these shows are cer­tainly geniuses. No longer does Nickelodeon show­case ani­mated com­edy car­toons fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters with bizarre, witty qualities.

Then there was the car­toon that taught us about being caught up in a tough sit­u­a­tion and help­ing peo­ple with real-life issues; I’m talk­ing about “Hey Arnold!” which aired from 1996–2004. If you’re a ‘90s kid, you remem­ber in the show Helga who con­stantly bul­lied Arnold because she was secretly in love with him. This pro­ceeded to indi­cate that when some­one referred to you as “foot­ball head”, they had a crush on you.

The tele­vi­sion shows that are cur­rently on Nickelodeon will never com­pare to those of the ‘90s. What hap­pened to the golden days of Nickelodeon? Today’s “Danny Phantom” could never replace yesterday’s “Rocket Power.”

I sup­pose the rea­son for ceas­ing won­der­ful shows, includ­ing the well known “Double Dare 2000” on Nickelodeon GAS, could be due the fact that Nickelodeon Studios closed down on April 30, 2005. This sig­naled the end of what I could con­sider an “awe­some” era of game shows, chil­dren sit­coms and cartoons.

In ref­er­ence to “Boomerang”, the spin­off chan­nel from Cartoon Network that fea­tured many clas­sic car­toon shows, I hope Nickelodeon will one day come out with a sim­i­lar net­work fea­tur­ing Nickelodeon car­toons of the ‘90s. I’d sure tune in to that.

With the change of sea­son comes a change of fashion

As the days in Big Rapids begin to grow colder, cloth­ing styles begin to change across campus.

Flip-flops and shorts are start­ing to be packed away in boxes to take back to Mom and Dad’s house to be stored until spring rolls around. These items will be swapped for thick win­ter jack­ets and Ugg boots.

But who says your per­sonal sense of fash­ion has to die along with the leaves? It’s def­i­nitely pos­si­ble to stay warm and chic at the same time.

As most women would agree, a pair of skinny jeans is essen­tial for the fall sea­son. Skinny jeans are per­fect for tuck­ing into a warm pair of Ugg boots.

According to vogue​.com, small touches of fur on coats is in this sea­son. Also, expect to see plaids, pur­ples and vary­ing shades of gray. “You can never go wrong with a neu­tral, like ephemer­ally cool char­coal,” says lifestyle​.msn​.com.

A per­fect way to beat the cold is to layer your clothes; this goes for both men and women. Both gen­ders can add lay­ers to their looks by wear­ing a jacket over a com­fort­able hooded-sweatshirt. This not only increases your warmth, but also adds more color and visual appeal to your over­all look.

Scarves are no longer just for women. “Scarves are appear­ing more and more fre­quently in the pages of men’s mag­a­zines and are quickly becom­ing the must-have win­ter acces­sory for men,” says style​feeder​.com, “A scarf adds a touch of color to a dark look and looks espe­cially sophis­ti­cated when worn with office attire.” Men and women alike should uti­lize both the warmth and mod­ish look that scarves provide.

The cold weather does not have to equate to a loss of style. For more ideas and tips on fall fash­ion, visit lifestyle​.msn​.com.

Ferris sweeps open­ing home series for the first time since 2001–2002

Ferris began the week­end home stand with a 2–1 come from behind vic­tory Friday night.

The Bulldogs fell behind late in the first period when Connecticut’s Daniel Naurato shot a goal past sopho­more goalie Taylor Nelson. Ferris responded early in the sec­ond period with a goal by sopho­more Derek Graham, his first of the season.

After remain­ing tied for most of the sec­ond period, Ferris was able to break the tie with 1:31 left in the period. Freshman Travis Ouellette deflected a shot by junior Scott Wietecha for a power play goal.

The Bulldogs were able to hold the lead through­out the third period as Nelson made some cru­cial saves, includ­ing stop­ping the game-tying goal right in front of the net with five sec­onds left in the game. Nelson ended the night with 26 saves, 10 of which came in the third period. Head coach Bob Daniels was pleased with the effort from his goalie.

“Nelson had a lot of key saves for us,” said Daniels, “He really had some key stops in the third period and that makes a huge dif­fer­ence in a close game like this.”

After start­ing the week­end with a close win, the Bulldogs dom­i­nated the Huskies on Saturday, post­ing a 6–1 blowout win.

Ferris jumped on Connecticut early in the con­test as senior Blair Riley net­ted his first goal of the sea­son 9:35 into the first period. Junior Todd Pococke gave Ferris a 2–0 lead on his first goal of the season.

The Bulldogs con­tin­ued to pro­duce on offense in the sec­ond period, as senior Matt Case scored a power play goal with 7:05 left to give Ferris a 3–0 lead. Connecticut’s lone goal came from Sean Ambrosie late in the period to close the gap to 3–1 at the sec­ond intermission.

Ferris shut the door on a Connecticut come­back in the third period. Senior cap­tain Cody Chupp scored his first goal of the sea­son on a power play just 42 sec­onds into the third to put away the Huskies.

After sweep­ing the home open­ing week­end series, the team feels con­fi­dent about the start of the sea­son. Chupp said the week­end sweep was exactly what the team needed.

“It was huge for us to start the home sched­ule like this,” said Chupp, “We were look­ing to come out of this week­end with a sweep, so it feels pretty good being able to play well at home at the start of the season.”

One of the keys to the vic­to­ries was the power play, in which the Bulldogs were able to score three power play goals. Ferris had just one power play goal last week­end against Canisius College.

“I’ve been very happy with the way we’ve been able to pro­duce on the power play, espe­cially since we’ve had to switch up our lines because some of the guys have been bat­tling the flu,” said Daniels.

The Bulldogs host Robert Morris University (Pa.), who is cur­rently 1–1 in the sea­son, this week­end at Ewigleben Ice Arena. Last sea­son, the Bulldogs lost and tied in two road con­tests against the Robert Morris Colonials.

The dif­fi­cult Michigan econ­omy has many grad­u­ates con­cerned about job­less­ness post graduation.

Ferris State University stu­dents eagerly await grad­u­a­tion to break into the work­force, how­ever the tur­bu­lent Michigan econ­omy has forced pre-graduates to rethink their employ­ment strategies.

Finding a job post grad­u­a­tion is dif­fi­cult enough but even more so these days. According to the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth (DELEG), Michigan unem­ploy­ment rate reached 15.3 per­cent in September, one of the high­est com­pared to the nations aver­age of 9.4 per­cent. Nevada fol­lows closely with 13.2 per­cent, fol­lowed by Rhode Island, 12.8 per­cent and California and Oregon with 12.2 per­cent each. According the United States Department of Labor Oct. 2009 sta­tis­tics, nation­wide unem­ploy­ment is most acute among white males (10.3 per­cent) and African-Americans (15.4 percent).

Although the Michigan unem­ploy­ment rate has remained steady since June 2009, the 6.4 per­cent increase in unem­ploy­ment from the last year’s is still daunting.

Staying in Michigan is longer an option for many FSU grad­u­ates. Richard Howes, weld­ing engi­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy (WET) grad­u­ate and process engi­neer at Wabash Steele, relo­cated to Princeton, Indiana, after his May 2009 grad­u­a­tion. Howes felt con­fi­dent that he could have found a job in MI based on FSU WET program’s 100 per­cent employ­ment place­ment rate, how­ever the cost of liv­ing in Michigan would have dimin­ished his resources.

“I could have earned 20 per­cent more money in Michigan,” said Howes. “But liv­ing here (Indiana), I have about 40 per­cent more dis­pos­able income.”

National salary of weld­ing engi­neers is between $50,000 and 100,000 yearly. Michigan weld­ing engi­neers could earn up to $20,000 more com­pared to Indiana. Although a welder could earn more, the jobs are sim­ply not in Michigan.

Howes also worked at Bradford and White in Caledonia, MI for nearly two years, and could have had a job there, how­ever he felt that work­ing at Wabash would ben­e­fit his career more. And even though Michigan is not the only state strug­gling with unem­ploy­ment, Howes feels secure in his occupation.

“WET taught me well and I have proved to be invalu­able to my com­pany.” Said Howes.

A Detroit News April 2009 arti­cle said that 53 per­cent of University of Michigan grad­u­ates left the state after grad­u­a­tion. And more than half of Michigan State grads relo­cate, specif­i­cally to the Chicago area.

The News also stated that from Michigan Future Inc. Survey that Michigan pub­lic uni­ver­sity grad­u­ates that grad­u­ated in 2007 left the state within one year. This arti­cle also stated that 63 per­cent of Michigan grads, that relo­cate had no inten­tions of mov­ing back.

Post–grad unem­ploy­ment also largely depends on career. According to an arti­cle in the Detroit Free Press, September 2009, phar­macy tech­ni­cians are the most in demand jobs in Michigan. Likewise, jobs in the health­care fields also remain in demand. Students pur­su­ing med­ical, engi­neer­ing, and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy degrees are more likely to find a job nation­wide com­pared to other degrees. Meanwhile, auto­mo­tive and print jour­nal­ism careers are rapidly leav­ing the state.

The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times have reduced the amount of their daily news­pa­pers, while the Ann Arbor News closed its doors in July 2009, becom­ing a strictly online news source. Several General Motors (GM) and Chrysler com­pa­nies have also closed their doors statewide. GM most recently closed their Pontiac, Mich. plant while Chrysler closed down Sterling Heights’ plant.

In addi­tion to stu­dents’ dif­fi­culty in find­ing a job on their own, many job recruiters and intern­ships have reduced their fund­ing and pro­grams. This occur­rence is due to numer­ous com­pany lay-offs and reduced bud­gets. According to a March 2009 arti­cle in the Michigan Daily, intern­ships and entry– level jobs in many fields have been reduced to unpaid work.

Although some stu­dents plan to take their chances of employ­ment dur­ing the reces­sion, oth­ers plan on extend­ing their edu­ca­tion via grad­u­ate school to dodge the eco­nomic reces­sion. A Dec. 2008 Michigan Daily arti­cles said that 45 per­cent of University of Michigan grad­u­ates had applied for grad-schools to avoid the job market.

Whether stu­dents plan to face the uncer­tain econ­omy or pro­long edu­ca­tion with grad-schools, Hughes has one advice for stu­dents in all fields.
“Look for a job before graduation!”

The foot­ball team is amidst its worst los­ing streak in 25 years

The Bulldogs have not lost seven con­sec­u­tive games in one sea­son since 1983. Senior quar­ter­back Kyle Parrish said that Pierce has dealt with the adver­sity very well.

“I’ve been on some los­ing teams and coach Pierce has han­dled it just about as well as any­body I’ve ever seen,” said Parrish.

The trou­bles on the field this sea­son can be attrib­uted to a num­ber of prob­lems. Athletics Director Tom Kirinovic said he feels the biggest issue this sea­son has been the num­ber of injuries to key play­ers, as well as the loss of many play­ers to grad­u­a­tion. The NCAA allows Division II foot­ball pro­grams to have up to 36 full ath­letic schol­ar­ships, known as Full Time Equivalency (FTE). Kirinovic said Ferris cur­rently offers 30 schol­ar­ships and they are typ­i­cally split between two or three play­ers. Rarely is a first-year player offered a full ride, accord­ing to Kirinovic.

“We’re now to the point where we are play­ing walk-ons against other teams’ schol­ar­ship kids,” said Kirinovic.

The Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference cur­rently has five teams ranked in the top 10 in the Super Regional 3 rank­ings and Ferris plays two of them, Saginaw Valley State and Hillsdale, in the final three weeks of the season.

“Our con­fer­ence does not give you a lot of oppor­tu­nity to catch your breath,” said Kirinovic, “If you’re beat up, you just have to deal with it.”

Kirinovic said that Pierce is an hon­est, hard­work­ing per­son who under­stands the edu­ca­tional part of ath­let­ics. Parrish said that he is always there to help the ath­letes when­ever they need it. Parrish said Pierce invites him to eat din­ner with his fam­ily, since he is from California and typ­i­cally can­not go home.

“Whenever I have needed some­thing, he is always there to help me,” said Parrish.

None of the coaches or ath­let­ics staff have employ­ment con­tracts for mul­ti­ple years, as seen at the Division I level. At the end of each year, Kirinovic said he will sit down with Pierce and the staff and eval­u­ate the season.

“We need to I think really scru­ti­nize every­thing,” said Kirinovic, “This is a time when you have to take a look at everything.”

Pierce has been a suc­cess­ful coach in the past. Ferris is 21–12 under Pierce in the past three sea­sons, though the Bulldogs’ win total has decreased each sea­son. Pierce has won 91 games as the Bulldogs’ head coach, more than any other coach in school his­tory. He has 10 win­ning sea­sons and recorded three con­fer­ence titles.

With the major­ity of the team return­ing next sea­son, Kirinovic is hope­ful that the team will turn it around.

“It’s tough to be patient when you’re get­ting your brains beat in, but if we can just try to stay pos­i­tive and be patient, it should help us next year because we’ll have all these guys that have played more than they prob­a­bly would have oth­er­wise,” said Kirinovic.