The United States boasts the world's largest gross domestic product, trumping second-place Japan nearly three to one in real dollar figures. Per capita, it is unparalleled among the world's major industrial powers in its ability to provide for 300 million citizens. Yet it is arguments such as these that hold little water for those forty-seven million Americans living without health care, often below the poverty line. As jobs with any real economic value disappear to nations where the work can be done for a fraction of the cost, more Americans become dependent on the minimum-wage jobs offered by our plastic consumerist economy.
With these jobs come no additional benefits; rather, the hours required to merely survive on such wages lead people to work through injury and illness, forgoing any medical wisdom for fear that its prohibitive costs and the ensuing loss of workdays will keep food out of dependent mouths. It is indeed shameful that a nation which can spend billions each day bombarding Third World countries in a futile effort to flush out their white whale cannot even afford to spend a fraction of the war budget on keeping its own population healthy. Take a simple case study on one of America's avowed enemies to witness what health care can do for a distressed population.
In the thirty years prior to the 1999 ascension of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela was in an economic nosedive. The per capita income of the South American nation plummeted thirty-five percent. Over forty percent of the population lived in poverty. Much has been decried about the neo-Marxism championed by Chavez; however, the implementation of universal health care coverage and food subsidies have led many Venezuelans to lead more prosperous lives with greater hope for a longer future. While raw data for poverty still shows the line hovering around the pre-1999 levels, the numbers fail to account for non-monetary income. By not having to worry about spending the entire paycheck on a doctor visit, Venezuelans have greater spending power with their money than do the poor and indigent in America.
Providing universal health care coverage is fiscally sound - doctors will still get their money, and the average citizen will have more money in their paychecks to spend in other areas of the economy. Providing universal health care is morally sound - as the world's remaining superpower, we have a duty to look after all citizens of the world, especially our own. And universal health care is easily fundable - if we can drop bombs over Baghdad, we can provide medicine for our infirm.