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| Yes | 75% | 345 votes | Total: 457 votes | |
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Add to FavoritesThe health care crisis is not only due to a large number of uninsured but also the underinsured. This has come about due to inefficient government programs and overcharging of private medical insurance to cover emergency care and public health costs that are not currently paid for but are necessary to our continuous health. Existing health programs need to be restructured and expanded to cover all individuals.
Immuniza tions are not being given to children, which is causing new epidemics to appear. The public health structure has collapsed due to under-funding and privatization, no for-profit organization is going to willingly lose money on waiting for an outbreak or epidemic. Then when one comes along they are under-prepared. The worries that horrible care and waiting would accompany government plans happened with the private companies as well. It happened because they are businesses concerned with profit. The government is capable of taking surplus from one program to fund another, that balance is what will be necessary to handle diseases that are knocking on our doors. They can use the money that is already funding health care programs, just redirect the effort. Rather than paying private companies they can pay the people.
New HIV drugs are prolonging the life of HIV positive individuals creating a pool of pre-AIDS patients that didn't exist 15 years ago. These individuals are susceptible to infections and new strains of antibiotic resistant microbes are infecting the population, including tuberculosis, and then spreading to others. There are some strains though that can't be pinpointed to this pool and are appearing in hospitals, Staphylococcus strains that are resistant to every known treatment. Flesh eating group A streptococcus strains also have made an appearance. Los Angeles is awaiting yellow fever and hemorrhagic fever outbreaks brought from overseas in the wake of its public health collapse that occurred in the late 90s. Public health and prevention is an area that is in great need of government support, the areas that are a collective goal rather than an individual right.
Also, proper medical care should be a right, not a privilege. Who determined that only the wealthy are worthy of living? I can not fathom the thought process that goes into determining that medical care is a good that can be bought and sold. It is not like having your yard mowed, where putting it off a week won't hurt anyone. Sometimes a week is more than a person has. When a mother lay dying on the floor of a Texas emergency room a few months ago it was because the medical system and the government in this country decided that money is more important to them than life. For decades it has been argued, by both Republicans and Democrats, that there is a need for a health care program that will care for all Americans. But it also got pushed onto the state governments to take care of, governments that pushed it onto counties who had very little income to use.
The American Medical Association coined the term "socialized medicine" in the 1930's and the insurance companies have taken it up as their buzzword. It is how they have twisted health care into a political game, where money is won and lives are lost. It is true that most government programs are not well run. It is true that the current health programs are inefficient and waste money. It is time for a change, a restructuring, a return to the simple idea that we are all human beings who deserve to live and for our ailments to be treated with dignity. It is time for the government to step up and take care of its people.
Learn more about this author, Alicia M Prater PhD.
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No
There's been a lot of talk about congress expanding existing government health programs to help the uninsured. But is that feasible? Do we really want that?
Our government has already grown too big and healthcare has become like a giant tire with a bulging rock stuck right in the middle: It no longer goes around smoothly, but thumps and bumps. Providing additional government funded healthcare would be like putting another rock in the rubber.
All government programs have to be paid for. The over-taxed, over-worked, underpaid middle class already bears the burden of an inflated government. To further expand the health programs would burden them so heavily they might collapse under the additional weight and disappear into the class of the working poor.
The government can, however, implement laws that would help insure that more Americans could afford healthcare. Regulation of select segments of the healthcare industry is a good place to begin.
The current laws which allow corporate conglomerates in the healthcare industry that are characteristically monopolistic, should be rigorously investigated and severely restricted in terms of capital gains. Consider the HMO. The advent of the HMO was supposed to have ushered healthcare into an affordable age. They promised all those communal perks - one fee covers all at 100%, affordable co-pays and reasonable monthly premiums. The problem is, those individual managed healthcare corporations grew into bigger healthcare conglomerates. The larger they became, the less we had individual choice and the higher the cost. Add to that, their self-appointed right to decid on the quality, quantity and who gets healthcare and who is denied, and you have a perfect example of a monopolistic monster who is protected by the government.
At present, most HMO's are financially unattainable and we're now given mostly a choice of PPO's with an 80/20 split. (Now here's a thought: That's what most health care plans were BEFORE HMO's but without the restriction of physician selection, specialists, or dictated drug formularies). So, we're right back where we started, before healthcare corporations, but without the freedom of choice AND with exorbitant prices. And the huge monster-wheel of the healthcare industry keeps thumping around and uses the same, slick marketing propaganda to try and make us believe that the PPO is a better and expanded version of the HMO and gives us greater latitude in managing our own healthcare.
Baloney! A multiple choice index of medical treatments, formulary prescription drugs and a choice of selected participating physicians and pharmacies is NOT a freedom of choice health plan. Folks, when it comes to healthcare, "one-size-fits-all" doesn't cut it. We're a society of individuals with individual needs. We're all being lumped together as numbers and either DENIED coverage based on the medical criteria of others in our same age / social /demographic / socio-economic group, or allowed to PURCHASE ridiculously overpriced healthcare based on the same prejudicial criteria.
In an ideological capitalistic society, no entity or corporation would take advantage of its citizens, but instead, exist solely for the purpose of allowing its citizens to prosper. Realizing, however, that human greed will most always supersede human need, the role of the government in healthcare should be limited to placing percentage-based financial caps concerning profit for large healthcare corporations, and creating laws banning the exclusion of, or exhorbitant price-gouging of coverage regarding pre-existing conditions. Healthcare should be attainable for all Americans and government enforced, not government provided.
That, however, is an ideology not likely to happen. The reality is the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and for profit Hospice corporations are too powerful and conveniently in bed with our politicians. They're way too powerful and it's next to impossible to take power away from those already in power without a major upheaval. We've become too dependant on our government for too many things and for the most part, we're afraid to buck the system.
So what's the fix? I don't know, but I do know that it has to start with expanded government regulations, not expanded government provisions.
The next time you have to give an opinion on whether or not the government should expand healthcare programs, stop and think of the ramifications before you answer: Nothing is free. Somebody somewhere will have to pay for it. Will it be you?
Learn more about this author, Meggie Hardy.
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