When an American citizen goes to the doctor to get treated, it should not be an issue to get treated because that citizen does not have healthcare, but in the United States, health care has been an astronomical epidemic about whether American citizens have the right to be treated without healthcare. A lot of people believe that socialized medicine has been a “liberal inspiration”. the populist view associates these programs with communist-run countries, but most industrialized countries have some form of socialized medicine. The matter is important to the United States now more than ever, due to the high percentage of Americans without health insurance. The cost of healthcare and insurance premiums has risen dramatically in recent years, resulting in a high number of employers dropping health insurance benefits for their employees. The rising costs of healthcare insurance result from higher costs of prescriptions, doctors’ fees, and hospitalization and administrative expenses. Perhaps the fact that the debate requires Americans to draw upon deep-seated ethical principles precludes agreement. The first of many groups that actually had the idea of socialized medicine was the populist group that was with the Republican group back in during the progressive era from 1890 and 1920’s.
The idea of populism was that the common man had a chance in society while also having an active role in their government. Even though people have an idea that everyone should pay for their own healthcare, and not have it given to them by the government; socialized medicine should be used in America because of all the benefits that people can seek from it without even knowing it, like having the right to health care could save lives and providing all citizens the right to health care is good for economic productivity. No one can deny that healthcare is important to not only American people but to all citizens around the world. One reason why healthcare should be entitled to all citizens is that instituting a right to health care could lower the cost of healthcare in the United States. In the argument that under a single-payer system in which all citizens are guaranteed a right to health care-“total public and private health care spending could be lowered by $592 billion in 2014 and up to $1.
8 trillion over the next decade due to lowered administrative and prescription drug costs”(Procon). Spending less on health care could help a lot of other pending issues that people seem to be fighting more like a higher minimum wage. “While in Canada, a country that provides a universal right to health care, spends half as much per capita on healthcare compared to the United States” (ProCon). And in the United Kingdom, a study was done in 2010 that with their single-payer system, they managed to provide healthcare to all citizens while only spending less than half of what the United States does per capita. A right to health care could save lives, meaning that because of a lack of healthcare, close to 50,000 deaths happen every year.
All of those deaths are related to being preventable deaths because America could have a single-payer system to prevent these deaths. “Another study shows that 13,000 people that are aged between 55-64 years old die because of lack of healthcare because they are retired and can’t afford the money to spend it on good healthcare with good doctors. The United States ranked at the bottom of a list of 16 rich nations in terms of preventable mortality. While in Italy, Spain, France, Australia, Israel, and Norway, all countries with a right to health care, they all were ranked at the top of the list.” (Pies, Ronald).
Bringing in the perspective of the doctors and how healthcare is affecting how they treat their patients and if they don’t have healthcare, they can’t be treated. This overall affects the mortality rate in America by increasing the preventable death rate dramatically. Having a single-payer system would help both the lives saved and the doctors help their patients because they don’t have to decipher who they can treat from who they can’t treat because of their insurance. Providing all citizens the right to health care is good for economic productivity.When people have access to health care, they live healthier lives and miss work less, allowing them to contribute more to the economy from gaining more money.
“One study in March of 2012 by researchers at the Universities of Colorado and Pennsylvania showed that workers with health insurance miss an average of 4.7 fewer work days than employees without health insurance. The US economy loses $65-$130 billion annually as a result of diminished worker productivity, due to poor health and premature deaths, among the uninsured.” (Bangor). Proving that America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet they still don’t have an universal healthcare, while still having to deal with so much debt, but; in other countries around the world, they have universal care and it actually helps their economy and their people by having healthy people working and having more motivated people to work for their companies instead of people being afraid to leave their house because they cannot afford to be sick. A right to health care could improve public health.
“According to a 2012 study that looked at data from over 100 countries, “evidence suggests that broader health coverage generally leads to better access to necessary care and improved population health, particularly for poor people.” In the United States, people are 33% less likely to have a regular doctor, 25% more likely to have unmet health needs, and over 50% more likely to not obtain needed medicines compared to their Canadian counterparts who have a universal right to health care. There were 11.
4 million uninsured working-age Americans with chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, and their lack of insurance was associated with less access to care, early disability, and even death.” (Sanders, Sen. Bernie). Showing the increasing rate of Americans not being helped to the full extent of what could be helpful to a lot of working people.
If people don’t have doctors that they feel are getting them healthy because of their insurance policies, what are they suppose to do? And because so many Americans are uninsured with diseases like Chronic Heart Failure, they need to see a doctor regularly to show whether or not their heart is improving and they just can’t go to the doctor because a business doesn’t offer health benefits or they don’t pay much so that person can’t pay for their own insurance which is so high as it is. This point also goes back to my last point, that if people aren’t fully healthy then they can’t work to their full extent. A right to health care could stop medical bankruptcies.
“About 62% of all US bankruptcies were related to medical expenses in 2007, and 78% of these bankruptcies were filed by people who already had medical insurance. In 2010, there were 30 million Americans who were contacted by a collection agency about a medical bill.” (Maruthappu). If all US citizens were provided health care under a single-payer system medical bankruptcy would no longer exist, because the government, not private citizens, would pay all medical bills.
It’s important to note that although health care is not fully universal in America, that there are still other affordable health care programs out there that can help Americans. The problem with that is, some hospitals and doctors don’t accept certain healthcare companies, so having one universal healthcare system would benefit both the patients and the doctors. It can help the hospitals by actually letting its doctors treat the people that come in looking for urgent care.
Hospitals often have to file for bankruptcy because people aren’t able to pay the bills the hospital gives them because everything is so expense including just staying in a room for one night being observed, could cost up to $2,000 and that doesn’t include scams, ambulance use and everything else.
