First of all, the situation today is bad and growing worse. It's oft cited that a significant percentage of Americans go through life without any form of health insurance. If they find themselves to be sick, they have two options: they can do without things like major surgery or expensive treatments, or they can pay huge prices for their care. In 2005, the number of uninsured people in the United States hit an all-time high (as it did the four years before 2005) of 46.6 million people.
| No. of Uninsured | Increase from Year Prior | |
In 2006, therefore, about 15.5% of the population was not covered in any way, shape, or form by health insurance. Many people cite that this is because they simply choose not to get it because they don't plan ahead and find the cost to be high. The problem with this argument in particular is that those people who do not have insurance eventually do get hurt or sick, and seek emergency treatment - this is why 45% of American expenditure in the health sector is covered by local, municipal, state, and federal governments. [source] Yes, we already have a partial system of universal health care, but it's conducted in a ridiculously inefficient and ineffective way. Regardless of this, it's estimated that 22,000 people died in 2006 because they lacked health insurance. [source]
The United States spends more money per capita than any other nation on health care. The WHO estimates this figure to be approximately $6,014 per capita, amounting to 15.2% of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States. The next highest expenditure countries are Luxembourg and Norway:
But what about the advantage of medical equipment and doctors purported by those against Universal Health Care? It stands to their reasoning that when the government takes over national care, doctors are paid less, and thus the incentive to become a doctor decreases. Also, since funding is assumed to be strained or the system incompetently run, how could equipment be in abundant in a state run system?
But anyway, my point is that health care in America isn't the best. It can be improved; it can be made more effective and efficient through the streamlining of the process. There are three directions that health care in this country can be pulled, and they are:
- To be made more private. This would include stripping the requirement that hospitals treat any patient, regardless of their health coverage. Regulations requiring employers to provide insurance for their employees will be laxed, and possibly even dissolved. Undoubtedly, this would drive the slide for more uninsured in the country - and without any publics funds to prop the system up (as now), many more would die from very treatable conditions.
- To be left completely alone. As previously described, we're nowhere near the top in terms of health care or survival rates in comparison with other industrialized nations. We also spend by far the most money on health care per capita.
- To be made more public, introducing a public option for health care. This would cover all citizens of the United States universally with public (tax) funds.
- As aforementioned, 22,000 people died in 2006 as a direct result of not having health insurance. Any percentage of total deaths this applies to is irrelevant, in my mind, as any needless and preventable death should have and could have been prevented. The worst part of the current system is that not everyone is covered by health insurance.
- With how "risk pools" work, it follows that the larger the pool, the cheaper it is to cover those in the pool. If you have a hundred million people in your risk pool, your "average" risk (calculated with the variance coefficient) is much lower than if you have a thousand in your pool.
- As you can see above, almost 45% of the funds for health care are current provided by the tax payers. This is a significant amount, already; 6.8% of the GDP, which is approximately $974 billion annually. The system as it is is quite inefficient, in addition to being ineffective as previously mentioned. People who do not have any form health coverage (and frequently even covered people) do not have regular checkups, and even skip things like regular mammograms, STD testing, and colon exams. When problems develop, they're usually to the point of interfering with every day routines, and an uncovered persons check into emergency rooms. The surgery that follows can be devastatingly expensive. As an old saying goes, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." If regular checkups were mandated for those covered by a public option, many of these problems would be caught early, and the damage to both individual livelihood and the economy itself could be minimized.
- This article expresses many of the inefficiencies in the private system at current. Doctors being given incentive to order more tests for personal gain does not improve the system, but simply makes the entire process more costly. It's a long read, but I'd definitely recommend it; it points out the glaring differences between a Texan health system and those like the Mayo Clinic where such incentive is mitigated in a very positive way.
1) Obviously, several "MUH TAXES" arguments are certain to come up.
People think it's immoral to make them pay for the health care of others; they don't seem to realize that that's what they're doing when they pay their premiums for their health care provider. Oh, and as previously mentioned, almost a trillion tax dollars to go health care already, anyway. If completely brought into the public sector as is, the program would cost about $2.17 trillion dollars. However, if spending per person were brought in line with the next-highest industrialized country, Luxembourg, assuming 10% of health care was still private, how much would the entire program cost?
The entire program would cost $1.33 trillion in this scenario. This is about a 37% increase in spending. And this is probably the worst case scenario; if a larger percentage of the system remained privatized (90% is a high figure even for most of the highly "socialized" nations like Norway or Sweden) or care was even more efficient in price, this figure could be even smaller.
2) It's certain that people will point to American exceptionalism and pretend that America is utterly unique in situation - its people paradoxically the most hard working and the most lazy people on the face of the earth. They argue that geography poses the biggest problem.
America being uniquely unhealthy, having the highest obesity rate in the world, could be caused by two things: the fact that Americans are just innately unhealthy, or the fact that our health care is poor. I don't prescribe to the fact that being American is in any way "genetic," especially considering the very young age of the nation. Thus, I point to the latter as a major cause of the obesity epidemic: people being either too ignorant to pursue healthy habits (which would be partially solved with more physicals), or people are too poor to avoid foods that are bad for them (an entirely different topic).
The average population density in the United States is 86.2 people per square mile. This varies from the extremely high (New Jersey's 1171 people per square mile figure) to very, very low (Alaska with only about 1.2 people per square mile). Australia, which offers a national health plan and spends about $2,885 per capita on health care, has similar geography. The Northern Territory sports a density of only 0.4 people per square mile, where Victoria (I disclude the Capital Territory) has a density of about 60 people per square mile. Considering most arguments as to the exceptional geography of America have to do with things being "too spread out" to support a public health care system, I beg to differ with them.
3) Many arguments hinge on the fact that such a system "is socialism".
Socialism. See what I did there? Put it in scary red? Doesn't that make you fear it so much?
It's just a word. It's just an ideology. We've gotten past many things in this country, but it seems we cannot see around a label which brands all things done for the collective good as having association with our Cold War enemies. It's time to transcend the labels that political discourse has branded our opinions with.
Anyway, that's all I really have, and that's the crux of my argument. There are holes - as with anything! - and if you find any, please let me know. I'd love to discuss potential problems, because in the end they only help further clarify a hazy issue. Thanks for reading.
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