Common Sense Flees America

The American Medical Association is urging the American Psychiatric Association to include in its mental illness manual "video game addiction" and the APA is considering it. The AMA wants to raise awareness of the issue and enable the addicted to get insurance coverage for treatment. This article was published in the Sunday paper last week. It went on to say that this addiction can be similar to a heroin addiction. A follow-up is scheduled this week on a nightly news programs.

The article cited a mother in Texas that complained that her teenage son's video game addiction caused him to fail two classes in school and become a recluse. Her picture was plastered in the headline and I actually felt sorry for her. I wondered was she embarrassed by the quote? I wondered how many times she went to the local video store and rented computer games for her son? If I gave my child heroin everyday and let them use it in the living room, would it dawn on me that I might be part of the problem. Most importantly I wondered if she realized many Americans would ask why she didn't unplug the computer and throw it in the trash heap a long time ago.

This is just another sign that America's thinking patterns are flawed and our common sense has deteriorated to the point of non-existence. Rather than accept parental responsibility it is easier to avoid it and have someone else pay for the outcome. Is it any wonder that health insurance in America is the most expensive in the world and that the average working class citizen can't afford it? Now we have what is supposed to be one of most well respected professional organizations in America, the AMA, devising a plan for insurance companies to foot another bill.

The amount of money spent researching the data for the AMA's report, reporting the story and making it the headline issue on a nightly news program could have been used more wisely to actually pay the reasonable medical expenses of someone who can't afford our luxury health care.

This ludicrous story comes on the tail of the recent lawsuit filed by a judge because a "mom and pop" dry cleaning service lost his trousers. We have an unaffordable health care system plagued by abuses of the very people that should be its watch dogs; a legal system back-logged with frivolous lawsuits, including those filed by elected officials who should be discouraging those practices.

Where is the sense in all this? Actually there isn't any, common sense spread her wings and took flight for distant lands leaving our mighty eagle to soar over a nation she no longer recognises.