Compromising on United States Health Care Reform
United States President Barack Obama has a plan. According to the messages
conveyed via his 2008 presidential election platform, it is a plan of the utmost
priority. President Obama would like to see every American afforded equal rights
and opportunities to receive quality health care and medication. Now, at a time
beyond his landmark ?first one hundred days in office,? the president has
finally begun his campaign to make it happen. Not surprisingly, the topic of U.
S. health care reform is being subjected to heated debates.
According to the United States Census Bureau, more that fifteen percent of
Americans are uninsured. That amounts to more than 45 million uninsured
individuals. Without
medical insurance to
protect them, many are without adequate health care, particularly among the
uninsured living below the poverty level. Meanwhile, the debates rage over
whether the taxes of the wealthy should pay for the poor to receive health care,
and opinions vary widely among the wealthy, who would be footing the bill. On
the one hand, many opine that the citizens who have no medical insurance are in
that situation due to laziness, lack of hard work, or lack of investment in an
education, and that the wealthy, who have worked hard to be where they are,
should not be required to pay for the lazy. On the other side of the spectrum,
some feel that medical care is a basic human right, and that all should share
the cost of medical care regardless of the cost, so that every human being may
have access to medical care whenever it?s needed.
The Census Bureau reports some sobering statistics on the topic. More than
eleven percent of children in the United States, who are unable to provide for
themselves, are uninsured. Fifteen percent of Americans are without medical
insurance, which represents the Americans lacking adequate health care, whom the
president would like to target. Twenty-eight percent of Americans are already
covered by a government plan, including Medicare, Medicaid, and military health
care; health care reform would likely take these benefits away and convert them
to something new, which is causing speculation among Americans currently insured
by the U. S. government. Sixty percent of Americans are covered by group health
insurance or employer-provided insurance, and the remaining ten percent have
individual health
insurance, representing the seventy percent of Americans who will
probably foot the bill for health care reform.
If President Obama does succeed in implementing health care reform in the United
States, it will be interesting to see what it looks like. Purely socialized
medicine is highly criticized due to the logistics of managing such a system,
such as deciding how to prioritize limited budgetary funds. If the budget only
allows for a certain number of procedures per year, who will decide which
patients get the procedure, and which go without? If health care reform attacks
the private insurance industry, what will the effects be on policyholder rights
and insurance availability? Many workers in the United States admittedly stay in
undesirable positions because they have to, not because of income, but because
of medical benefits. Will employer-based coverage continue to dominate the
health insurance market? If other options become more affordable for Americans,
will employees leave corporations and migrate toward self-employment?
Compromise is coming, but what form will it take? Only time will tell.
