Universal Health Care

There isn't any problem with the quality of America's health care system, the problem when it comes to health care in America is that so many people don't have it and can't afford it. We have over 300,000 physicians here, but we're spending over 1.6 trillion dollars a year on privatized health care and forty-five million Americans in poverty are currently not insured without any way of seeking medical attention (Social Problems). Americans spend way too much on health care and our system benefits those who can afford it since 1/6th of the population isn't paying anything and we're spending way over a trillion dollars anyway. Every other developed nation has some form of national health care available to its citizens and they spend much less. America should adopt a Universal Health Care system because we can definitely afford it, we're the only ones who don't have it, and we could help a lot of people.

One of the reasons of poor health in America is our economic system. Nathan Karp, author and journalist for the Socialist Labor Party of America, with his article, “Capitalism Has Caused a Health Care Crisis”, blames the American economic system for our health care woes today. He blames for-profit hospitals for the fact that so few of those in poverty have any access to health care today (Nathan Karp). He says that ending suffering and misery in our social order comes from the fact that some to most Americans are completely motivated by profit. Health insurance companies deny claims, physicians perform expensive operations when they don't even need it, and the young, old, and impoverished are the ones who suffer the most (Nathan Karp). Later he quotes French Utopian Socialist Charles Fourier “The physician desires sickness, the undertaker wants burials, and forestallers want famine to double or treble the price of grain” (Nathan Karp). He means that Capitalism makes people want bad things to happen to others so they can make money. No one should profit from human suffering, if people need medical attention, care, and help with their sickness there is no moral justification to deny people heath care.

One of the arguers of better health care in America for people who need it is Daniel Callahan, Professor of Philosophy and elected member of the Institute of Medicine. Dan says in his book Setting Limits that we need to stop putting so much money into keeping the old folks alive, try to give them better ending years of their life, and focus more of our attention on children. That means doing cheaper treatments on them like better access to painkillers and nursing homes instead of trying to keep 90 year olds running with expensive steel replacement bones (Dan Callahan). He generally goes against life-extending technologies for the elderly because of the immense costs and asks that we instead turn our attention and resources towards keeping children healthy, giving them happy childhoods, and prompting them to create a better future. This doesn't mean disrespecting our elders, it means focusing on making them as comfortable as possible in their later years and helping the new generations so they can have better lives overall so they'll help the planet, their own children, and us in our later years. If children were all kept healthy and happy we may not need to spend as much on health care as we do currently (Dan Callahan).

Canada offers a much better and less expensive heath care system than we do in America. Some may say that if a country adopts a nationalized health care plan then the quality may go down, but Elaine Bernard, President of the New Democratic Party of Canada says that barely anyone waits, especially people with life threatening diseases or problems (Elaine Bernard). The Federal Government there makes it so that at least 95% of its citizens are insured with the National Health plan and 50% of the Doctors aren't specialists. This is compared to the 25% uninsured citizens and 75% specialist doctors we have in America today (Elaine Bernard). That means that almost all of their citizens are insured and have access to 25% more physicians that are waiting to see and treat them. Granted in America we might have a rougher time reforming the healthcare system to fit our needs and make it as effective as a country with a socialist system of government and economics, but people need to be cared for.

Here are some statistics about heath care and money. As previously mentioned, we spent 1.6 trillion dollars on health care and that was in 2003, thanks to inflation and increases in the on health care and that was in 2003, thanks to inflation and increases in the population, that amount has no doubt gone up in the past half decade (Social Problems). We spend 14.9% of our Gross Domestic Product on this where other developed nations with national health plans spend much less, for example Canada and Japan spend less than 10% of their per capita GDP on their citizens (Social Problems). We spend more than any other developed country, yet we only rank 15th in the world in terms of health (Social Problems). Also, as shown by the World Health Care Map above The World Health Care map above, we are the only developed country in the world that does not have some form of a health care plan, we don't even attempt it. The red countries are Afghanistan and Iraq, the gray countries are those with no health care, the blue countries are those providing some form of health care, and the green ones are those attempting to provide health care. We claim to be the greatest country on Earth, we are the richest country on the planet, but we can't afford to give people medical treatment?

According to the American Student Medical Association (AMSA), it would only cost approximately 69 billion dollars to pay for medical care for all American citizens. We currently spend 623 billion dollars on our defense budget, which is more than 123 billion dollars more than every other country's defense budget in the world combined (Global Security Org). It is therefore feasible for everyone to be able to obtain medical treatment with the help of government programs without raising taxes, we'll just use what we already have, but in a different way. Another source of medical expenditure money could be ending corporate welfare. According to an older USA Today article from 1995, “Put an End to Corporate Welfare”, the government gives over 85 billion dollars a year to the people who need it the least and the people who need money (and in this case medical care) end up paying for it. With those two sources of money saved from two other sources cut, we'll have a whopping 208 billion dollars to spare. There's all this money to spare out in America's governmental expenditures and it seems that whenever there's a war going on benefits to poor people and the rest of us are always the first to go.

I believe that Americans not having full access to health care is completely ridiculous. We work just as hard as the other countries and despite having more money, more supposed access to more physicians than any other place on the planet, and the best health care in the world we still spend twice as much and many people in our country do not benefit from our overspending. Today, Capitalism has gone too far, sick people should not be profited over, we should give our brothers and sisters of America equal and respectful treatment the same way other countries like Canada do.