A Universal Health Care
According to an October Kaiser family Foundation poll, health care reform was rated among the top 3 concerns of Americans that registered to vote. The price of health care and prescriptions are increasing at a faster rate than wages while coverage is decreasing, resulting in an immense amount of Americans uninsured and much more under insured. The American system of health care is not efficient and it “may even be out of date and failing to deliver affordable, comprehensive health care to all citizens” (Mackell 40). Rather than providing people with better health quality or abundant resources, it pushes millions of hardworking Americans into financial calamity. Health care coverage has turned into a luxury for people that are unable to afford basic health care and medication, while the health industry and drug companies are making millions. The issue that Americans have been facing for a long time is the much needed health care reform; clearly the current medical care system is not working for America and the benefits of universal health coverage will well surpass the drawbacks.
Compared to other countries, America grew private, multiple-payer health care system approximately the same time as Europeans began developing a form of single-payer health care system that includes a wide range of coverage and lower in cost “because their health-care systems were essentially destroyed during the World War II” (Clemmitt 697) which enabled them to rebuild from scratch. By single-payer, it means that residents are required to make regular payments towards an insurance system, which is the ‘single-payer’, available for the whole nation. Most industrialized countries are implementing this method during the past century with the exception of the United States. With this universal coverage insurance, the cost of a sickness or injuries, which can be both temporary and unpredictable, are weighed down among the people of the population. On the other hand, Americans buy their insurance through their employers; so the health risk payments are shared among the employees rather than nationally.
“The problem has been worsening over time with little recognition or action taken on the part of lawmakers and members of the health care industry” (Mackell 40). To this day, American health care costs are higher than 40% than other countries, leaving more than 45 million Americans uninsured. The underinsured are people that do have insurance but are still struggling to pay for the bills. However, both the uninsured and underinsured behave similarly with bad habits, such as not going to the doctors often, rarely filling out their prescriptions, or going for regular check-ups.
A health care reform is much needed right now; besides for the obvious reasons, it will make everyone’s lives a lot simpler. With universal coverage, low cost preventive care is more available so patients don’t wait until their sickness reach a serious stage where costly procedures are required to be performed on them. Likewise, young people assume that they don’t need the ever increasing price of health insurance because they believe that they’re in good shape. However, unpredictable diseases like swine flu is still able to infect them if they’re not