Should the United States Provide Health Insurance for Everyone, Essay Example

United States nowadays is the only country in the list of the industrialized ones that still has not adopted any form of the government-financed health-care reform with the universal coverage (Clemmitt, 2009). “Not only do other countries cover all their citizens, but they do it while spending significantly less money than the United States spends to provide only partial coverage” (Clemmitt, 2009). As it can be noted from the Organization’s for Economic Co-operation and Development “OECD Health Data 2009”, United States spent $7,290 per person on health care in 2007 with the next countries on the list spending nearly 40% less, while providing universal coverage (“OECD Health Data 2009”). With that in mind, “President Barack Obama and Democrats in both the House and Senate have introduced so-called universal coverage proposals to cover the uninsured and begin slowing the budget-busting growth in health-care costs”, which can be marked as a significant political incentive that has finally moved the health-care reform to the top of the Washington’s agenda for the first time in 15 years (Clemmitt, 2009). The on-going health-care debate has raised a number of arguments that had been put forward by both the opponents and the advocates of the reform. What we are going to do in this paper is identify the main points that are being stressed by both sides in order to get a clear picture of the political discussion by means of summarization and organization of the available information and data.

“Only in the late 19th century did medical treatment become developed enough — and thus expensive enough — to require special financing to help people pay for it” (Clemmitt, 2009). Since the end of the World War II, the White House has considered a number of the universal coverage proposals, however, neither of them succeeded in even getting voted in Congress (Clemmitt, 2007). The best effort, and the closest in content with Obama’s reform, was Clinton’s near universal coverage plan, which foresaw individuals buying insurances and employers covering their workers (Foley). But, as a result of the mass criticism from insurers and pharmaceutical companies, the plan was never voted on in Congress (Foley). Today’s political debate on the health-care reform is for the most part the search of clear answers for the following concerns: how expensive the reform will be for the country, the effectiveness of the single-payer system as well as of the creation of the public insurance plan. Those are the main pitfalls that the politicians are arguing about in the search for a reform that would neither collapse the already unstable economic system nor leave a significant portion of the American population, and that is 45 million people or one in seven Americans, uninsured (Clemmitt, 2009).

The main opponents of the health-care reform proposed by the President Obama are the Congressional Republicans and some conservative Democrats. They argue, first of all, that the reform is too expensive for the country (Clemmitt, 2009). “Every health-care proposal Democrats … have offered would only hurt the economy,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky (“Health-Care Plan”). As the health-care expenses would be compensated by means of the increased taxation for high-income families, opponents also argue that the federal budget deficit is already too high and the economy too weak to justify additional taxes or raising the deficit further, especially in the view of the world financial crisis (Clemmitt, 2009). “I don’t like the idea of raising taxes in the worst economic crisis since World War II,” said Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross, one of the conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats who oppose many reform proposals (Garofalo).

Another opposing argument is that it’s not politically feasible for the United States to shift to a health-care system of a single payer today (Clemmitt, 2009). The history of U.S. health care unfortunately makes single payer unrealistic, said former Democratic National Committee chief Dean. Europeans, most of whom use some form of single payer, “have much more comprehensive and cheaper health-care plans than we have, but they got there because their health-care systems were essentially destroyed during World War II,” leaving them free to rebuild from scratch, he said. The United States, by contrast “grew our private [multiple-payer] health-care system” around the same time, when “the only way that American employers could give their employees a raise was to enhance health-insurance benefits,” said Dean. “You’ve got to start from where you are, not from where you wish you were” (Klein).

Finally, critics warn that increasing government influence over health care could threaten Americans’ freedoms — and even their very lives. Many conservatives argue that the public option would not improve care or cut costs and could put private insurers out of business. Under a public plan, “we could arbitrarily reduce costs by paying less for things,” but until much better ways are developed to monitor the quality of care, paying less would simply lead to lower quality, says Tom Miller, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Under a new government-run plan, Americans will find it more and more difficult to make appointments with physicians” because “lower payments will make it increasingly unaffordable for providers to see” them, said the Senate Republican Policy Committee (“A Government-Run ‘Public’ Health Insurance Plan: Why Doctors, Hospitals, and Patients Will Lose”).

On the other hand, President Barack Obama and the Democratic Majority have another view of the issue. Advocates counter that universal coverage offers incalculable savings and benefits, including making low-cost preventive care available to all so the uninsured don’t wait until their illness reaches the critical stage and then end up in an emergency room, where treatment costs more and is subsidized by higher premiums for insured consumers (Clemmitt, 2009). In addition, many uninsured young people who are in good health think the rising cost of insurance is too expensive and not worth the cost. But swine flu, for example, often strikes just this population. “So, if there is any kind of pandemic, we are far more at risk because so many people are walking around” without coverage, says pediatrician Margaret Flowers, a member of the group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP).

Another argument in favor on the reform is that of the single payer system, which can extend coverage to all as well as provide incentives to cut costs (Clemmitt, 2009). The single-payer systems that, for example, Canada has in each province hold down costs while covering everyone, argued Sen. Hugh Segal, a Conservative Party member of the Canadian Senate. In 2006, “The U.S. spent $6,714 per capita” without covering all its citizens, “while Canada … spent $3,678” with universal coverage, he said (Galloway). Moreover, supporters of the reform point out that a single-payer plan is more accountable to patients because “when you have something publicly administered, you have much more transparency” than you have with private insurers, who can shield virtually all their decision-making as proprietary business information, says pediatrician Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Finally, to those who argue that a public plan might have unfair competitive advantages, advocates of the reform respond that no market requires “competitors to be equal but [only] that they have an equal chance to succeed if they are equally good at doing what consumers want” (Volsky). Furthermore, most private insurers simply aren’t big enough and “don’t have the leverage” to successfully bargain with hospitals and drug companies for better prices, says Norman Daniels, a professor of population ethics and population health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

All in all, the most important goal for reform legislation is to “subsidize low-income people’s access to insurance,” says Stan Dorn, a senior research associate at the nonpartisan Urban Institute. By 2008, a family health insurance policy costs as much as a minimum-wage worker earns in a year, and “the situation becomes increasingly unsustainable” as costs continue to rise (Clemmitt, 2009). However, the biggest hurdle the country faces in reforming health care is the fact that the easy-to-cover populations are already covered by SCHIP, Medicare and Medicaid. As Norman Daniels notices “The gap that’s left is the hardest to cover”.

Works Cited

“A Government-Run ‘Public’ Health Insurance Plan: Why Doctors, Hospitals, and Patients Will Lose,” U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, March 24, 2009, http://rpc.senate.gov.

Clemmitt, Marcia. “Health-Care Reform”. CQ Researcher, August 28, 2009, vol. 19, is. 29.

Clemmitt, Marcia. “Universal Coverage”. CQ Researcher, March 30, 2007, pp. 265–288.

Foley, Tim. “The President Who Took Us the Closest to Universal Health Care, Part 2,”. Change.org, Feb. 16, 2009, http://healthcare.change.org.

Galloway, Gloria. “Tory Senator Goes to Bat for Health Care,” [Toronto]. Globe and Mail, July 8, 2009, www.theglobeandmail.com.

Garofalo, Pat. “Blue Dogs Threatening to Quash Health Bill Over Surtax Voted for Bush Tax Cuts”. Think Progress blog, Center for American Progress, July 15, 2009, http://thinkprogress.org.

“Health-Care Plan”. MarketWatch Web site. June 20, 2009, www.marketwatch.com.

Klein, Ezra. “Is the Government Going to Euthanize Your Grandmother? An Interview with Sen. Johnny Isakson,” Ezra Klein blog, The Washington Post, Aug. 10, 2009, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezraklein/2009/08/is_the_government_going_to_eut.html.

“OECD Health Data 2009,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, June 2009, http://www.oecd.org/document/30/0,3343,en_2649_34631_12968734_1_1_1_37407,00.html.

Volsky, Igor. “Jacob Hacker: Stripping Away ‘Inherent Advantages’ From a Public Plan ‘Is at Odds With True Competition’”. The Wonk Room blog, Center for American Progress, April 9, 2009, http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org.