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Universal health care is also known as socialized medicine, it is the availability of inexpensive medical services for all citizens, regardless of income, funded by taxpayers. Universal health care has been made out to be a negative thing since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to Pulitzer Prize winning author Laurie Garrett in her book "Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health", the American Medical Association (AMA) coined the term "socialized medicine" in the 1930s to scare voters into believing that health care for all would be socialist, much like the terminology thrown around in the most recent U.S. election. Socialism invokes images of Stalin and Marx and communism, the antithesis of democracy and the freedom to do as one wishes with their own money, but federal taxes and social programs are already socialistic principles in the democratic society.

The AMA did not want to risk the government and public stunting the inflation of doctors' fees that had occurred since FDR's policies began pulling Americans out of the depression. Instead, the government programs Medicare and Medicaid were legislated and formed, and the AMA and doctors began overbilling the government and the inflation of their fees increased exponentially.

President Truman also attempted to bring universal health care to the country, and the AMA fought him, too. Then President Nixon tried it again, but his Watergate scandal interrupted his political agenda, and the insurance companies joined with the AMA to fight, too. By this point, an entire new industry was benefiting from the lack of available and inexpensive American health care.

The AMA has been able to step back from the fray due to the insurance lobbyists fighting for inflated rates and decreased services of their own, keeping universal health care out of the reach of Americans. This has resulted in disease outbreaks from lack of immunization, which currently includes whooping cough, the collapse of public health, including hospital acquired antibiotic resistant bacterial infections and treatment resistant tuberculosis, and a loss of income to those who do have health care, with a self-employed woman in the rural Northeast United States having to pay $700 per month for a policy that includes maternity care but not well baby care, her spouse, vision, or dental.

There should be a more compassionate system of health care in the United States than what currently exists. It is time that the doctors go back to healing for the sake of healing instead of the 3-day work week and consistent rounds of golf, and the insurance companies stop paying their CEOs nearly a million dollars a year. It is time for all Americans, human beings, to have access to health care, to quality health care. No more mothers dying on the waiting room floor of ERs waiting for ambulances to take them to another hospital. No more epidemics taking our children and parents. No more rich versus poor in the game of life.

Yes, not all doctors are in it for the money, and they deserve compensation for their years of education and long hours, but not all are as virtuous as the doctors held up as examples of the wonder that is medicine.

Learn more about this author, Alicia M Prater PhD.
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