Is It Time To Think And Talk About Universal Health Care?

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Is it time to think and talk about universal health care?

Timothy Baldone

Axia College

COM-125 / Utilizing Information In College Writing

John Smith

January 12, 2008

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As with any other generation in American history, America now faces a problem that desperately needs attention. The health care system in the United States is broken down. Everyone knows it, but no one knows how to fix it. The United States of America

is the last super power on Earth, but not in the area of health care. Some Americans are fortunate enough to have health care coverage from work, while most other Americans suffer without it. Why? If the health care system doesn't work, why do we keep using it?

Is it finally time to think about a single payer universal health care system that would cover all Americans?

We have all seen the commercials of starving children around the world that die due to the lack of health care. Yet, we ignore all of the people here in America that face a similar plight. Maybe we should all take a better look at how great life is, here in America. Not at our own lives, but rather the lives of our neighbors. Do we simply not understand the circumstances in which they live? They work hard to live the "American Dream", just to get sick and lose everything. America needs to remember where we came from and what we are made of. This country was not founded on the idea of the rich grow old healthily and the poor live without the same treatment. It was founded on the notion that anyone could come to the United States and prosper. How can we prosper without proper health care coverage? It is time that we all open our heart and minds and think about America as a whole. America needs to learn, talk about, and enact a solution to this problem. Without open dialogue, we will not succeed at any attempt to improve our health care system.

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The current health care system is simple but complicated. Americans can fall into any one of the following scenarios: Employed with health insurance, Employed without health insurance, unemployed with health insurance, or unemployed without health insurance. If employed, the employer may or may not offer health care insurance coverage. If they do, you may or may not be paying for it out of your income. If the company does not offer insurance, the person would have to find and pay health insurance on their own. A lot of times, the cost is just simply too much for most American families. Which leads us to government sponsored programs. There is help from the local and federal government, if you qualify. If the income of the individual is over the poverty line, they probably will not qualify. It gets worse for people that are unemployed. There are COBRA plans (from pre-existing insurance policy) that can be purchased to keep the health care coverage active for a short period of time. How a person is supposed to afford health care premiums while bringing home no income is beyond me. Which leads us to being unemployed and without health care coverage. Again, a person may or may not qualify for government assistance based on prior earnings, which may or may not be too much. In any of these scenarios, a medical emergency could leave a person or family in complete and total financial ruin. This is simply no longer a supportable health care system for America. Americans need to start thinking about changes that can be made to improve the quality of health coverage for all Americans.

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Change cannot happen until people are more educated on the matter of universal health care. Americans need to stand back and take a good look at life here in the United States of America. Then, and only then, can we approach the subject of health care

reform with a clear and open mind. According to Rashford (2007) "the over 45 million

Americans who are uninsured speak volumes about the problem with our health care system." The most important part of the entire article, written by Rashford, is this:

Universal health care coverage is an important subject for all Americans. Millions of Americans are not covered by health insurance plans, many cannot afford to purchase health insurance, and many employers do not offer such coverage due to the high costs, especially for small businesses.

In an article titled, "Options limited for millions without medical coverage", I found a troubling statistic. Phelps states:

One in four--that is 5.59 million Texans--lack health insurance, according to the Task Force on Access to Health Care in Texas, a research group sponsored by 10 state academic health care centers, including the Texas A&M Health Science Center in College Station.

How long can we stand back and let this continue on? How can we change things?

Educating ourselves has to become a priority in this matter. The more we know about the problem, the more likely we are to find a solution for it. Deborah Gardner PhD, RN, is the Chief Planning & Organizational Development Officer at Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center, National Institute of Health in Bethesda, MD. Gardner states "Educating ourselves on various strategies that could improve the health care system is a

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useful first step to better participate in the health care reform debates (2007)." With that in mind, we need to remember that the presidential elections are coming up soon.

There are many presidential hopefuls running around the country trying to get an upper hand on their opponents in the primaries. All of the presidential hopefuls have their own ideas on health care reform. They realize just how important this issue is to voters. According to a poll, conducted by Lake, Merman, & Wiefek (2007):

"Health care is the number two issue overall and the top domestic issue in the campaign: 40% name the situation in Iraq as their top first or second most important issue, followed by 29% who choose health care and prescription drugs."

In the same poll, Lake et al shows how valid this issue is to Americans. The poll was conducted by reaching 1607 likely primary/caucus