Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Zack Blumberg
Emily Considine
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman

Krystal Hur
Ethan Kessler
Magdalena Mihaylova
Max Mittleman
Timothy Spurlin

Miles Stephenson
Finn Storer
Nicholas Tomaino
Joel Weiner
Erin White 

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T

his July, the Michigan 
Medicine hospitals were 
ranked first in the state of 
Michigan and 11th in the country 
by U.S. News and World Report. 
As a recent University of Michigan 
graduate, this makes me incredibly 
proud. We call ourselves the 
Leaders and the Best, and it seems 
others continue to recognize our 
excellence on many fronts as well. 
However, these rankings also make 
me frustrated. If Michigan has one 
of the best hospital systems in the 
country, then why was my most 
recent experience at the hospital 
spending 22 hours in a chair while 
in a psychological crisis?
As an incredibly stressed-out 
undergraduate at the University 
and a resident of Ann Arbor until 
2018, I was a frequent face at 
Psychiatric Emergency Services, 
almost always because of suicidal 
ideation. This specialty program 
behind the emergency room is 
meant to provide mental health 
crisis 
evaluations, 
treatment 
recommendations and screening 
for inpatient hospitalization. I’ve 
written before, in an effort to put 
a face to a psychiatric patient and 
reduce stigma, about how these 
countless PES visits and two 
hospitalizations helped stabilize my 
mental health. What I have written 
less about are some of the negative 
experiences that went along with 
being a patient.
To say I spent 22 hours in PES 
while already suicidal is not an 
exaggeration. I spent it sitting 
in an uncomfortable chair and 
had little contact with health 
professionals after the initial few 
hours of evaluation. The lights were 
constantly on, I was getting next 
to no sleep, and I was listening to 
House Hunters play on repeat until 
I felt so numb, I began begging 
to go home. This is not a unique 
experience. I’ve met and heard from 
countless others who spent similar 
spans of time, or longer — sometimes 
days — waiting in PES for a bed on a 

local inpatient unit, of which there is 
a nation-wide shortage. Doctors first 
and foremost take an oath to do no 
harm. How was this not harming my 
already fragile mental state? I could 
similarly talk of the time I was sent 
home from an inpatient stay with 
few resources besides a safety plan 
that I compliantly filled out without 
much else of a choice. I expressed 
with terror to my discharging nurse 
that I shouldn’t be sent home, only to 
almost attempt to take my life and 
end up back at PES a few hours later. 

Let me make this clear: I place 
little blame for my experiences on 
the doctors, nurses, social workers 
and other staff I interacted with at 
Michigan Medicine. They couldn’t 
conjure up more inpatient beds or 
create a more restful space in the 
PES waiting room. They were doing 
their best with the system, resources 
and training that existed. I do believe 
that their intentions were good, 
and at least most of them wanted 
the best for me. My point is that if 
Michigan is going to continue to lead 
as one of the best hospitals in the 
country, we need to lead in putting 
more resources into expanding and 
improving the quality of psychiatric 
services, and these changes need 
to be a priority. We need to expand 
and put beds in PES, so patients are 
not spending days waiting in a chair. 
We need to increase the number of 
inpatient psychiatric beds available, 
both statewide and nationally. We 
need to fortify discharge planning 
and resources, particularly for 
patients frequently going to PES, so 

others aren’t leaving feeling as lost 
as I did many times.
Michigan 
Medicine 
received 
national 
rankings 
(or 
high 
performing 
recognition 
for 
Rehabilitation) from U.S. World 
and News Report in every single 
department 
classified, 
except 
psychiatry. Michigan is eighth in 
urology, eighth in ophthalmology, 
10th in pulmonology and lung 
surgery, 13th in cardiology and heart 
surgery, 15th in geriatrics and the 
list goes on to include every other 
department compared. However, 
psychiatry is “not ranked” on a 
national level. That is a disgrace to 
our well-known name on a national 
and worldwide stage. 
The 
Michigan 
Medicine 
website states that “this is the 27th 
consecutive year that Michigan 
Medicine 
has 
been 
nationally 
recognized 
for 
strong 
across-
the-board performance.” Jeffrey 
Desmond, chief medical officer of 
Michigan Medicine, was quoted as 
saying, “Our priorities are providing 
the safest and highest quality of 
care to all our patients.” I can’t help 
but feel that a key field of medicine 
and a vulnerable sub-population 
of patients is missing or being 
forgotten in these statements.
At the end of the day, I am still a 
huge Michigan fan. I wear maize 
and blue with pride, cheer on the 
Wolverines on game days and look 
forward to visiting Ann Arbor again 
soon. I’m grateful for my time as a 
student there, though it was also 
filled with pain and difficult mental 
health issues. Importantly, I am 
doing much better now mentally, in 
part because of the staff I interacted 
with through Michigan Medicine. 
I love my alma mater, dearly, yet 
it’s because of this love that I want 
Michigan to do better.

Michigan Medicine is one of the best, and can do better

MAX STEINBAUM | COLUMN

What Uncle Sam could learn from Johnny Canuck

MORGAN RONDINELLI | OP-ED

I

t’s 2:15 p.m. on a Tuesday in 
May, and most of Canada’s 
federal legislators have taken 
their seats in the House of Commons 
chamber. Geoff Regan, a member of 
Parliament for West Halifax, dressed 
in the barrister robes of the Speaker 
of the House of Commons, rises from 
his stately speaker chair at the end 
of the aisle dividing the governing 
Liberal Party from the minority 
opposition. “Oral questions,” Regan 
pronounces, 
before 
repeating 
himself in French. He yields the 
floor to Andrew Scheer, the leader 
of the Conservative Party and the 
Question Period is underway.
The controversy of the day is a 
scandal involving Mark Norman, 
a former vice admiral in the 
Royal Canadian Navy. Norman, 
of the Canadian military, was 
charged with a breach of trust in 
March 2019 for allegedly leaking 
sensitive 
information 
about 
a 
shipbuilding contract. For months, 
the Conservatives have accused 
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 
administration of unjustly assailing 
Norman for the leak, and even of 
political interference as Norman’s 
case developed.
Scheer stands and looks across 
the aisle at Trudeau. “The prime 
minister has finally decided to 
answer some questions on the Mark 
Norman affair,” Scheer says with 
a smile. “He’s had plenty of time to 
rehearse the script and memorize 
the lines. What I’d like to know is ... 
why the government went through 
such efforts to prevent the truth 
from coming out.”
Scheer’s 
riled 
Conservative 
colleagues 
rise 
and 
applaud. 
Trudeau, who had been staring 
Scheer down during his diatribe, 
buttons his black blazer and prepares 
to speak. The prime minister then 
stands and, beginning his response, 
a chorus of Conservative heckling 
nearly drowns him out.
These raucous showdowns are 
a near-daily occurrence in Ottawa, 
and are even a cornerstone feature 
of Canadian democracy. But such 
a debate 700 miles south between 
Democrats and Republicans — 
much less U.S. House Speaker Pelosi 
and President Donald Trump — is 
almost unimaginable. A cause of this 
difference, of course, is the respective 
structures of the American and 
Canadian governments. Canada’s 
parliamentary 
system 
comes 
from the Westminster model that 
evolved in London, under which 

the leading party in the House of 
Commons — the equivalent to our 
House of Representatives — selects 
a member of its ranks to serve 
as prime minister. In this way, a 
parliamentary system intertwines 
executive and legislative functions, 
making the country’s head of 
government more responsible to the 
legislative branch.
Under 
the 
United 
States’s 
presidential system, the executive 
and 
legislative 
branches 
are 
independent 
by 
design. 
A 
presidential system has its merits, 
such as the right of a country’s 
constituents to vote directly for 
the chief executive — an ability not 
afforded by a parliamentary system. 
A glaring drawback, however, is 
that our legislative branch is far less 
able to readily hold the president 
accountable. The U.S. president is 
not required to listen and respond to 
the accusations of a hostile Congress. 
So why would he? In fact, the 
president only enters Congress once 
a year for the prepared State of the 
Union address and never responds 
to the questions and concerns of 
representatives. 
The consequences of having 
no forum for debate between the 
president and legislators include 
having less ways to hold America’s 
chief 
executive 
accountable 
to 
Congress and fewer observable 
interactions between our president 
and lawmakers. It’s a stark contrast 
to the Canadian Parliament, where 
the prime minister’s presence at 
Question Period is an expectation, 
and where Trudeau has been 
slammed for a poor attendance 
record in the past — which evidently 
means appearing a scant once or 
twice a week. 
It must be acknowledged, of 
course, that little legislative progress 
is actually made during Question 
Period. It’s more of a circuitous 
shouting match than anything 
productive, 
concedes 
Canadian 
news magazine Macleans’s Aaron 
Wherry, but it’s still “an essentially 
wonderful thing. Each afternoon, 
the government of the day must 
face the criticism and scrutiny of its 
nearest rivals in an open and only 
barely restrained public forum.” 
If nothing else, Question Period 
forces Canada’s leaders to engage 
each other on a daily basis, and its 
broadcast provides the Canadian 
public with constant insight into the 
political affairs of the day.
From 
my 
frequent 
summer 

visits to the public balcony above 
the Commons floor, “QP,” as my 
Canadian colleagues called it, 
seemed to be evidence of a robust 
and healthy democracy. I regretted 
that there was no American 
analogue, and more so that such an 
easily-implemented practice will 
likely never become a feature of 
our democracy. 
As it turns out, the idea of 
Congress hosting the president 
and cabinet members in a QP-style 
forum has historical precedent. “At 
various times,” details Matthew 
Glassman of the Congressional 
Research Service, “proposals have 
been offered by American scholars 
and public officials to increase 
the formal contact between the 
executive branch and Members 
of Congress.” Even as recently as 
2009, then-candidate for president 
Sen. John McCain stated he would 
“ask Congress to grant me the 
privilege of coming before both 
Houses to take questions and 
address criticism, much the same as 
the prime minister of Great Britain 
appears regularly before the House 
of Commons.” 
It is high time we revisit the 
question of Question Period. In 
March 2019, a Quinnipiac poll 
found that 65 percent of Americans 
feel Trump is not honest. Such 
a condemnation of our current 
president’s integrity, it seems, 
translates to a public desire for more 
executive accountability.
In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville 
praised 
American 
democracy 
and its “matchless Constitution.” 
We have long adhered to notions 
of American exceptionalism as 
articulated 
by 
de 
Tocqueville, 
forged by an enduring trust in the 
governmental system created by the 
Founding Fathers. This faith, while 
well-placed, has made Americans 
reluctant to introduce changes to 
our democracy — and, too often, 
we irresponsibly regard revision as 
unnecessary. In reality, we must be 
willing to borrow effective ideas in 
response to modern concerns.
After all, while de Tocqueville 
considered America exceptional, 
he also did not believe it was 
beyond reproach. “The greatness 
of America lies not in being more 
enlightened than any other nation,” 
de Tocqueville wrote, “but rather in 
her ability to repair her faults.”

Max Steinbaum can be reached at 

maxst@umich.edu.

Morgan Rondinelli is a University 

alum in Ecology and Evolutionary 

Biology. She is currently serving with 

AmeriCorps as a Mental Health First 

Aid Instructor.

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FROM THE DAILY

Urge talks for peace, not politics
L

ast week, President Donald Trump announced via Twitter that 
peace talks with the Taliban were “dead,” putting a halt to 
nearly a year of conversations between the United States and the 
insurgent terrorist group. The proclamation came right after Trump 
revealed plans to have a secret meeting with Taliban leaders at the 
historic Camp David. The president claimed he ended these talks after 
the Taliban admitted to their role in an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan 
that killed at least 11 people, including one U.S. service member. This 
attack alone, he said, was enough to indicate that Taliban leaders do 
not “have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway.”

However, this attack is far 
from the first indication that 
the 
Taliban 
has 
continued 
hostilities during negotiations. 
In fact, negotiations continued 
amid a spike in killings of 
both Afghan civilians and U.S. 
soldiers by the Taliban. Many 
of these have been substantially 
more deadly than the suicide 
attack in Kabul last week, 
suggesting 
that 
this 
event 
served more as an excuse than 
a reason to end negotiations. 
The sudden end of peace 
talks came with surprise as 
the U.S. Special Representative 
to 
Afghanistan, 
Zalmay 
Khalilzad, stated an agreement 
had been reached that was 
waiting to be finalized by 
Trump. This abrupt reversal 
casts doubt on the Trump 
administration’s motives for 
coming 
to 
the 
negotiation 
table in the first place. The 
hypothetical agreement allows 
Trump to fulfill a longstanding 
campaign promise to bring an 
end to the war in Afghanistan, 
satisfying his voter base as the 
2020 election looms around the 
corner. 
Moreover, 
canceling 
negotiations last week — two 
days before the anniversary 
of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — 
allowed 
the 
administration 
to demonstrate a superficial 
willingness 
to 
“stand 
up” 
against the Taliban and paint 
the insurgents as the true 
obstacle to peace.
Peace talks with the Taliban 
are one example of Trump 
exploiting political issues to 
maintain 
relevance, 
further 
his image and establish his 
legacy. 
Trump’s 
choice 
to 
announce an end to previously 
secret negotiations through a 
social media platform not only 
cheapens the issue but turns it 
into an open spectacle. Drawing 
attention and a following to his 
administration by dramatizing 

political decisions reflects a 
strategy that Trump has used 
repeatedly during the U.S.-
North Korea summit and the 
U.S. withdrawal from the Paris 
Climate 
Agreement. 
Trump 
follows a legacy of presidents 
who use political negotiations 
for personal gain and as a 
ploy, ultimately impeding the 
improvement of U.S. foreign 
policy. 
As part of a generation that 
grew up with the 18-year long 
conflict in Afghanistan, seeing 
yet another president use the 
promise of peace as a political 
gambit is frustrating. In 2003, 
President George W. Bush’s 
Secretary of Defense Donald 
Rumsfeld announced an end to 
“major-combat,” even as NATO 
added 65,000 troops to the war-
torn country. Later, President 
Barack 
Obama 
promised 
to withdraw all troops by 
2014, but instead left nearly 
100,000 American soldiers in 
Afghanistan at the end of that 
year. As a longtime critic of the 
war in Afghanistan, Trump had 
said that his “original instinct 
was to pull out.” In fact, in 
February of 2019, American 
diplomats 
sat 
down 
with 
Taliban officials to begin one of 
the final rounds of negotiation. 
In the end, Trump’s cancellation 
of peace talks possibly lost him 
a rare opportunity to put an 
end to a conflict that continues 
to kill both U.S. troops and 
innocent civilians.
War 
is 
complex, 
and 
simply 
withdrawing 
our 
troops 
overnight 
without 
considering the ramifications 
would be irresponsible and 
potentially disastrous to the 
Afghan government, now that 
the 
Taliban 
controls 
about 
14.5 percent of the country’s 
territories (this excludes those 
territories currently contested). 
However, 
Afghanistan’s 

unstable 
government 
has 
long been the justification to 
prolong this conflict. President 
Bush stated in 2005 that the 
purpose of the war was to “help 
ensure 
Afghanistan’s 
long-
term security, democracy, and 
prosperity.” Yet, over a decade 
later, the Afghan democracy 
remains 
weak, 
flawed 
and 
corrupt. 
While the U.S. has long 
claimed to be a bearer of 
peace and democracy, much 
of 
Afghanistan 
political 
instability is a result of the 
Taliban’s influence and the 
continued occupation by the 
United States. Trump argues 
that simply leaving and giving 
the Taliban free reign would 
be a dramatic abdication of 
responsibility. 
However, 
if 
the U.S. should continue to 
act as a beacon of democracy, 
there needs to be substantive 
discussion about how the U.S. 
can rectify its past and current 
foreign 
policy 
decisions 
in 
Afghanistan. Actions like those 
made by Trump this past week 
do not accomplish this end. 
Moreover, the peace talks thus 
far have excluded the Afghan 
government. 
We recognize that the conflict 
in Afghanistan is complex, and 
our call to action requires a 
genuine commitment to peace. 
An essential first step to reviving 
peace talks is a re-evaluation of 
U.S. foreign policy decisions 
made in Afghanistan for the 
past 20 years. Simply coming to 
the table is not enough, and it is 
imperative for all parties to not 
only be included in the talks, 
but also be truly committed to 
ending the conflict to protect 
the lives of both U.S. troops 
and Afghan civilians. Hence, 
the Trump administration must 
prioritize the peace process 
rather than use it to for political 
capital and media attention.

Michigan Medicine 
received national 
rankings ... in every 
single department 
classified, except 
psychiatry

