Extremely body modification-ordeal or tradition?

In Thailand lives a folk, the Padaung folk, which has other feminine beauty ideals compared to the rest of the world. It's unbelievable, but in a small little province in Northern Thailand women tend to wear a specific jewelry around their neck because it's a symbol for prettiness and social reputation. Instead of rings, a world-wide misbelief, a spiral is wounded around their necks. The longer the spiral is, the better is their regard and their change for getting married. With the age of five, youngsters get their first jewelry already and after two or three years they get a longer one. Until the age of 30 or 40, the spiral is extended. Women are very proud of the decoration around their neck because it has a highly meaning for them.

The pain although, is neglected. During the procedure of wounding volutes around their necks, the spirals will be adopted to their bodies by the hands of strong women and this causes ache because the volutes rub against their flesh. Former consisted of brass, the golden spirals can even weigh to 10 kilograms and get a lenght of about 40 centimeters. The bones of the cervical spines of the so-called "Long Neck Karen" are deformed thereby and the collarbones are pushed down. As a result, their necks seem stretched. The drawbacks are that the skeletal muscles of the necks weaken and that women aren't able to bear their head any longer by themselves.Next to absorption pain, the risk of neck fraction is also increased and hygiene is disregarded. Also the vocal cord could be stimulated, which produces a dull sound in the throat. The liberty of action is limited too, but not only because of the volutes around the neck, even arms and the part under their knees can be covered by spirals.

Nevertheless, the extremely body modification is a tradition which has been adopted since years, and women aren't aware of the health effects. Nowadays this method is even practised in public because the province has opened their doors for tourists and other custom-interested persons. It's amazing that this fashion-appearance exists till today and that it's being accepted from the public.

Here you can watch a video about the custom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL8ARB5FmsA

What's your opinion about that? Simple tradition and beauty or crualty to deform bones?

Youpost 2

The health care system of America- a prejudice?

Hello everybody. Today I will write about the health care system in America because I'm interested why some people get the opportunity of a very good medical treatment, whereas others don't even have access to a health insurance. Due to this reputation of a bad health care system in America I was curious to find out more about it and to checking their validity. It's all just a rumor or is there more behind it? And what is actually the origin of prejudices about the American health care system? Where are they come from?

It wasn't easy to find out more about this prejudices, but finally I discovered that thanks to the documentation Sicko, which Michael More published in 2006, a discussion about the bad health care system provoked. An important point of this film is the dependence of the health care insurance to the work place, which means that only employees who work, have access to an insurance. Independent firms with the name Blue Cross or Blue Shield insure the staff by regular monthly payments and grant therefore a comprehensive insurance, including many free preventive services, physician visits, hospital stays and prescriptions.

But apart from that, even poorer, chronically ill, disabled and older people have since 1965 the opportunity of health care, due to public insurances like Medicaid and Medicare. Whereas Medicare is an insurance for seniors, disabled and chronically ill people, Medicaid is for people who can't afford a normal insurance. A minority even is private insured, but only the higher-middle class and some of the middle class can allow themselves this luxury of a comprehensive insurance.

Nevertheless there are over 50 millions of people which don't have enough money for a private health care insurance, but don't earn so less that they get a public insurance. Besides of this fact, also not all of the employees are insured by their employees or lose the insurance because of a change of employment and a fifth of them are illegal immigrants. So a lot of people aren't in the pleasure of getting an adequate and high-qualified insurance, and also the so-called "Obama Care" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKMwJ0ScK5g), which should covers over 97 percentage of people, wasn't successful yet and is heated discussed . A further point to mention is the high infant mortality, which is not even in cuba as high as in America which confirms a bad health care system also.

Another problem is that America is the country with the most expensive health care spending. There are between two and three billions of money a year that America invests on health care. Even the spending per capita amounts for the double quantity of what Germany spends. Since 1980 the health care costs are even increased about the tenfold what America normally was used to invest and altogether the amount of money is accounting for over 18 billion of the gross domestic product. Medicare especially has a lot of costs because plenty of people are getting older and older and therefore people tend to use health care longer as before.

When costs don't stop, soon it could be that you can read everywhere:

It's ridiculous.

To sum up, it's to say that nothing has changed with the new reform Obama Care. The health care system remains as usual a cost-expensive system and only people who are insured by their employers, those who can afford a private insurance, or fall into the category of Medicare or Medicaid are guaranteed comprehensive services. So, prejudices can still be truth, and who is interested can watch this link at the end which confirms the bad health care system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoZDAS832lA

Links used:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/amerikanisches-gesundheitssystem-teuer-und-gut-aber-nicht-fuer-alle-11803148.html
http://www.welt.de/kultur/article991330/Die-heilenden-Haende-des-Michael-Moore.html