Bonn – 12/28

Since arriving in Bonn, we have had a lecture over different healthcare models from the federal level. Although I have heard this lecture before at A&M, there is always more to learn and remember! Although just the basics, the information presented in this lecture is essential for us to build an understanding of our own healthcare system as healthcare practitioners. Learning about the origins and logistics of healthcare in other countries allows us to compare our own system in America; these are the beginnings of the tools we need to examine the pitfalls and advantages in our system and improve any problems, especially since America lags behind other industrialized countries in many health statistics. Other stats that surprised me are the huge amount of money America spends on health care annually in addition to the fact that America is the only developed country that has not adopted guaranteed issue and individual mandate policies. These are clearly areas that we do need to reexamine in the immediate future, if not work to change in the future.

We have also visited the House of German History Museum and had a guided tour by Dr. Wasser. The social impacts of the Holocaust have always fascinated me, and we tend to study this topic a lot in literature and history in high school. The visit to this museum was beneficial because it showed me the modern Germany as it is influenced but does not revolve around its past. This will help me frame our further studies over the next weeks in a more comprehensive Germany, not the Nazi Germany we hear so much about. I enjoyed seeing the cabinets full of missing persons identification cards, which demonstrated that the victims of the war summed much greater than those of the Holocaust. I also loved to learn about the dynamics of the relationship between East and West Germany after the war, especially the Luftbrücke. It was funny to see that POM, the easy-bake mashed potatoes, was so greatly represented, since my German teacher from high school always complained about growing up eating POM every day! The movie night at AIB summed our exploration of the East-West relationship perfectly since we watched Good Bye Lenin!, which represented the ideology so prevalent in East Germany in an identifiable way through the character of the mother.