State Federal Health Care, Essay Example

There are two main ways that health care laws can be mandated: federally, or at the state level. In this paper, I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each .

With health care mandated at the federal level, the most obvious benefit is equality. There would be one law that doles out health care for every citizen, and each citizen would be treated equally. However, a problem arises: how would it be funded? Federal benefits typically require funding through taxation, and paying for the health care of an entire country is a very expensive task. Government officials would have to figure out where the money would come from—increased tolls, higher taxes on cigarettes, house purchases taxes, etc.—and pass it through all levels of government.

Conversely, the benefit of state-mandated health care is that it gives each state an opportunity to fund it privately and competitively, a concept that can often lead to greater savings. Industries that are run privately have to best sell their product, and the results can often be good.

But because health care would vary from state to state, there’s no guarantee that every person would be at the same baseline of services rendered. If a person in state X receives 10 units of health care from their provider, that’s no guarantee the same would happen in state Y. Therefore, it seems best to have federally-mandated health care because it best ensures every person gets the same level of care, or at least meets the same baseline for health care, where the same cannot be said for health care mandated state by state.