by Jeremy Schaber

Created on: October 16, 2008   Last Updated: October 19, 2008

In regards to the question of whether a universal health care plan is possible here in the United States the real question is not if a plan is possible but whether we can have a truly successful health care plan here in America? The answer sadly with the leadership we have and do have right now is that we can't and more than likely never will be have to have a truly successful universal health care plan. One major reason is that the people funding that plan will be the American tax payer who will not have oversight of how their money is being spent.

At the same time I don't want a universal health care plan because it's too easy for people to commit fraud against the government without any real precautions. Case in point is Medicare and Medicaid with a 30% fraud rate that would get any private insurance company closed down. If these agencies which are mostly aimed at more mature citizens and citizens that are teemed to be eligible for their services are having this much trouble with fraudulent claims. While seemly our elected leaders don't care that it costs hard working tax payers more and more money to balanced out their mistakes without holding certain people responsible and putting in proper precautions to keep this from happening again and again. We need to ask ourselves how could we expect that the government will do any better with health care for every person when they have enough trouble with health care for the aging citizens? We also need to ask ourselves what kind of services we would receive from hospitals and medical professionals under universal health care? I don't see us getting gold type service but instead poor and deficient services that will only lead to greater illnesses, suffering and death. For again we must remember that the people paying for these services are the American tax payers who are seeing their money going into an ever growing pit with no bottom these days.

While we may be hearing about insurance premiums from private insurance companies going up the real answer is to allow capitalism and the free market to solve this dilema. It is quite simple, if the people are allowed to choose from a pool of insurance companies who will be forced to compete with each other instead of being forced into a government run-health care system which will only give dismal services they will find that they will be able to get better services for less. Many people will of course disagree since we have heard so many stories of uninsured people who can't go see a doctor or even visit a hospital and have to suffer because they don't have the money to buy insurance. However the government's role as laid out in the Constitution is not to provide universal health care but to allow a market to grow that will make it easier for people to buy affordable insurance. Once the free market and capitalism are allowed to do what they do best this entire issue of health care and all the problems surrounding it will fade away so long as people are ready to face the consequences that will come with that. However if we think that the answer to this problem is by having the government set up a universal health care plan all we will find is an ever increasing national debt for overpaid services that give us nothing to improve our health and well being.

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