With roughly 47 million uninsured Americans in 2006, the country doesn’t seem to be doing enough to retaliate against this insurmountable crisis. Moreover even though health care plays a large role in the main policy issues of the 2008 election, none of the candidates are proposing the drastic changes that are essential to the welfare of the American people.
Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama’s plans contain the type of revolutionary change we as Americans need. First off, Barack Obama’s plan only includes mandatory health insurance for those under the age of 18, adults are given the choice to buy or decline. This is just not acceptable for a country of our stature in this day and age. Isn’t good health one of our basic rights? Doesn’t it fall under life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Second of all neither of their proposals addressed the outrageous cost of health insurance- an indispensable human liberty. The main solution to fund it is to renounce the Bush tax cuts. Also, Americans paying for health care are taxed in order to subsidize the poor. So basically this calls for a classic Robin Hood situation, not unfamiliar in the American government system. Instead the government needs to take the initiative and make the radical turn needed to re-invent the entire health care system.
We have many wonderful health care examples to look at. The majority of countries have a much better system than us. For example Canada spends only $3,165 per capita on health care, compared to over $7,000 per capita in the United States. (Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Why can’t we learn from the numerous other countries that seem to have this thing down, instead of trying to come up with a system from scratch? If the wheel’s not broke don’t fix it. And if it is, well then give it up and get a new one.
All in all, I think Michael Moore is going in the right direction on America’s needs in health care. His proposal is this: 1) Every resident of the United States must have free, universal health care for life. 2) All health insurance companies must be abolished. 3) Pharmaceutical companies must be strictly regulated like a public utility. (Source: michaelmoore.com) Although, his plan may seem rather extreme to many people, we cannot accept anything less than what our surrounding countries have shown us is possible.
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I would like to start my critique by saying that I agree with your larger statements that we need healthcare and it seems imperative that the government should find a way to provide to people in extremity. Maybe more than half of the people in the US (maybe much more than half) probably agree with you as well. That is where the problem is, being that the country is right along with you, it just can't find a way to do it.
47 million Americans. That's a lot of people. Let's talk about how to insure them. Canada's system provides health insurance by offices and statutes that have been long instituted (therefore cheaper now because some of the bugs are out of the system). Also considering the Canadian dollar is stronger than ours, it will be more expensive. However, just for the sake of argument, let's say the US government was able to provide healthcare at federal and state expense for $4000 per capita. That's 188 billion dollars that the government and the people aren't used to paying.
Tell the people that they are going to pay 188 billion and they start asking how this will tangibly benefit the other 260 million Americans, many of them lower-middle class who are paying huge amounts for their own insurance. Many of them will demand government funded healthcare as well. Considering that lower-middle class constitutes most of our population, one could imagine more than 200 million more people wanting healthcare, but we'll be optimistic and say 100 million people. That totals four trillion, 188 billion dollars.
The other big problem is actually stated in your article - how we will pay. You state that tax cuts for the wealthy should not be renewed. I agree, but I bet the rich people do not. But ending these tax cuts will only free up a few billion, we will need to tax more, a lot more. Rich folks can pay for elite health care, why would they increase their taxes by huge leaps for no benefit to them? The trouble with social reform legislation is that everyone thinks that everyone else should pay for it. We all want universal health care, but we want the rich people to pay for it. In actuality, the level of taxation required would make health care more expensive for everyone in the country, except the poor - a minority of the population that has lower voter turn out (and therefore has less say in the realization of such a system)
We look at Europe and see socialized medicine and how well it is working (pretty well) and, as Michael Moore brought attention to our own social institutions, we see that our libraries, schools and post office systems are working fine (fine enough) and we ask "Why can't we do this with healthcare?" The biggest reason we don't have social medicine is it takes a LOT less money and will to MAINTAIN a social system than to INSTITUTE a social system. Europeans aren't having problems because they've had these systems longer than their countries can remember, as for US post, school and library systems, a lot of that was chartered before the US declared independence and the rest was instituted along with the growth of the country. At this point, the only way we will be able to institute the kind of change we need is through frustrating baby steps, paying a lot more money and doing things very carefully.
But I am as excited as you are for them to get moving with it.
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