Atieh 1

Hussain Atieh
PS1010
Professor James Buccelato
25 April 2015
Service Evaluation
The class of PS1010 mainly revolved around certain issues that groups of students would
research and do service work in attempt to alleviate the issue. My topic mainly revolved around
the problems associated with the current health insurance system set up in the U.S., specifically,
people being unable to afford quality health insurance. My group and I delved into several
aspects of the health insurance field in order to investigate the issue, including: the quality of the
care, the accessibility to the care, the technological limitations that contribute to the problem,
what policies were in place to help alleviate the issue, and the existing NGOs that attempted to
address the issue. I felt that the topic my group and I were attempting to address was an issue
with policies that would require quite some time before anyone would be able to assess the
effectiveness of those policies. From the research that Ive done and service hours that Ive
devoted to the issue, I learned that the issue of citizens lacking affordable health is due to and in
combination with many more factors than I had initially anticipated.
First, the research that my group and I did revealed to us that the policies in effect are
only part of the issue. I was surprised to find that there were many underlying problems that
helped to contribute to the issue, such as the two-party system of the united states making
passing certain policies that might be deemed extremely helpful in addressing the issue to be
almost impossible, and that technological limitations factor in contributing to the issue. The fact
that many people are unable to afford quality health insurance is largely due to these underlying
issues that help contribute to certain ineffective policies, as my group and I found out. Being the
realistic optimist that I am, I was very eager to volunteer in helping to alleviate this issue in any
way that I could. However, considering the scope of our class, the time constraints set on us, and
most importantly, the lack of experience, finding volunteer work that would allow my group and
I to directly affect those who are affected by the issue was close to impossible. As a result, my
group and I had to settle for volunteer work that, although relevant in addressing the issue, was
menial.
For my groups service, we volunteered at ACCESS, a local NGO that provided a variety
of free services to those who were in poverty, had medical issues, or needed a helping hand in
general. Due to complications in scheduling, the only volunteer jobs that my group and I were
able to do was clerical work, which was mainly just filing the papers of clients of ACCESS.
Although the concept of the job seemed very mundane and irrelevant in terms of addressing the
issue, the job managed to be very rewarding in a philosophical sense. The job I was given was to
go through all the files of certain clients, and to see how recently the client visited ACCESS. If
the last time they came to ACCESS was over 6 years ago, then I would mark that client for
deletion; all of the clients papers would be shredded and the client would essentially be removed
from the database of previous clients. If the clients last visit wasnt over 6 years ago, then their
file would be kept.

Atieh 2
I was assigned with going through every file from A-Z in the social service department.
The clients papers never had a clear cut last visited sign in; I had to look for the earliest
document in that clients papers, and if that document was over 6 years old, all of their papers
would get shredded. As a result, I would have to assess very sensitive documents in order to
determine when clients last visit was, such as food stamp application forms and welfare
applications, which were usually done with help from ACCESS workers. As I assessed these
clients documents, I would usually get quick glimpses of parts of their forms where they would
have to specify their disabilities, reasons as to why theyre unemployed, previous occupations,
etc. All these people, who are turning in forms to get enough money for just one more doctor
visit, or to be able to pay just one more months rent so they have enough time to look for a job,
are usually all just people down on their luck, who were given a bad hand to deal with, and truly
needed help. Many of these clients were either sick, uneducated due to lack of money, or had
multiple children to take care of with no current breadwinner in their household.
My first time doing the clerical work, I had done several hours work and wasnt even half
way through the B files when it was time for me to leave. To think that all of these clients that I
was looking at were all in the same boat; people with families to take care of who were down on
their luck and needed a helping hand. It was scary to think of just how many people needed this
help from ACCESS. Especially thought provoking were those clients who I had to mark for
removal. Of all the information those clients papers gave, they would never say why they
stopped coming to ACCESS for help. Was it that they were finally back on their feet, did they
move to a place where they could afford all of these necessities they were applying for, did they
get the job that would solve all of their problems? This fact, despite the tons of information filled
papers I sifted through to find the date of the last visit, was never revealed, and remains a
mystery ever so.
At the end of the day, I had to think, what does this clerical work have anything to do
with the issue of people not being able to afford health care? Well, the message in the service I
had done could easily be overlooked if I had just spent the hours looking at the clock mindlessly
sifting through the papers until a set of numbers resembling a date popped up. All of those files
that I had gone through, even more so, all of those files that I had yet to go through, taught me
that a person being unable to afford health insurance may be just one of the many issues that the
U.S.s system is contributing to. Being able to provide people with the ability to afford health
insurance is one of the many problems that many people today are facing, and to be able to solve
the issue of health insurance would be a step in the right direction for the U.S.s society as a
whole. Overall, the research Ive done on this issue and the volunteering Ive done has made me
more steadfast in my desire to help alleviate the issues in acquiring the basic necessities that
many people evidently face in the U.S.