Sociology Assignment 1

Health care has become a commodification because insurance companies see the potential profits that can be made off of people. Commodification is when something is assigned a value and exchanged on a market. In the video one lady talks about going back to New Zealand for a year or two because health care is not such a commodity over there. She will return if her health car is reinstated or she is old enough to claim Medicare. Health care is a necessity much like public education and police enforcement. Taxes are used to fund those jobs unlike health care. The market value, or the value something can be sold at, has increased for obtaining health care especially to those who have a history of illness.

Marxist’s analysis of social inequality is built around people falling into different social classes. He believes that there should be people in lower classes because it is an essential part of being a society. If he were to see the health care system the way it was today he would be very disappointed. Marxist did not like capitalism and thought it was exploitative and corrupt. The health care companies are not working to help out the people of the country they are working to make profits for the owners. One lady, Lisa Girion, talked about how she investigated some California companies and discovered that most have a department dedicated to rescission. She found that Health Net had paid a bonus to their employee in charge of recessions. The bonus was based off of how many recessions she made in a year and the amount of money that the company avoided paying off of the cases.