There are certain politicians in this country who seem dedicated to the cause of taking away people’s health coverage. But the people are rising up and saying “no” – each day more of them realize that it’s downright shameful that the richest nation on the planet can’t even provide basic health care for all of its citizens. It’s time for a national health care system in the United States.
I used to think it was just a thing that could work in some countries. There was a time when I didn’t realize that literally all of the world’s leading nations have a national health-care system: Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France, Norway, and Sweden just to name a few.
They’re looking at us like we’re crazy because our government spends more per capita on health-care by far than any of the countries listed above and gets inferior results. In those countries, their money goes to paying for medical procedures and medicines but in our current system the people’s money goes into the pockets of healthcare CEOs and the representatives of other middleman organizations. It’s less of a healthcare system and more of a profit engine for the people near the top.
America is literally already No. 1 in per capita health-care expenditure, and yet each year thousands of people are forced to declare medical bankruptcy. There is no excuse for someone’s finances to be ruined because they need medical treatment. Studies like one in 2009 by The American Journal of Medicine consistently conclude that medical debt is the No. 1 reason for personal bankruptcy.
The financial results are dire, but in many ways the health results themselves aren’t much better. Using 2015 data the World Health Organization (WHO) released a study in 2016 ranking countries by life expectancy: America came in at 31st, right between Costa Rica and Cuba. There are other rankings, but the results are even more grim for life expectancy in the US.
Surely the greatest nation on Earth might struggle to stay that way if its people are dying faster than those in the countries that aspire to dominate global finance and politics like we do now. Sure, health care isn’t the only contributing factor when it comes to life expectancy, but making sure that people can afford their medicine and medical appointments would help.
We do not have the best health-care system in the world, not by expenditures, or by results, and not by life expectancy. The fact is that the American people and the government are paying more for less because there’s this strange notion that universal health care can’t work here. There’s too much diversity, or too much land, or too much America! – it’s nonsense, there’s no reason it couldn’t work here.
The only possible argument is that it might require a little more money than our current system. But consider this: just taking the money we currently spend on an inferior system and putting it into a medicare for all system would start improving things. We would also need to give more power to the government health care system to negotiate drug prices.
The drug companies’ profit margins get thicker while some people go without the medicine they need. It’s just going to get worse unless we do something. Currently, the federal government is not allowed to negotiate lower drug prices. That’s a regulation that hurts the people who get government health care now and the people who might get it in the future and isn’t beneficial for anyone but the people who work in the upper echelons of giant drug conglomerates.
We need to institute a medicare for all system as soon as possible. The rest of the world is laughing at us for finding partisan or unrealistic reasons to not create such a common sense system.
