Universal Healthcare: Political And SocialobsticalsEssay Preview: Universal Healthcare: Political And SocialobsticalsReport this essayUniversal Healthcare:Political and Social ObstaclesMany Americans are under the impression that the United States has the best health care system in the world. That may be true at many top medical centers but the disturbing truth is that this country, as a whole, lags well behind other advanced nations in delivering timely, effective, and affordable health care. This next presidential election might take the country in a new direction in terms of how our medical system is run. In fact “socialized medicine” has been mentioned numerous times in the current presidential debates. This is not the first time in American history that this issue has been brought up, in fact universal health care has encountered many social and political roadblocks, but it seems as if it will soon be feasible for America to adopt some form of European style health care. Why has it taken so long to realize the flaws of our current system?
Past U.S. presidents foresaw the problems that would arise with the American health care system, and they sought to make a change before Americans suffered. Unfortunately their ideas were not met with an open mind and ultimately were dismissed. In 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt became president elect and it was his responsibility to ensure that the nation prevail during those times of hardships. He proposed a plan, the “New Deal,” which would reignite the economy and provide education and healthcare to all. Eventually, the US made it out of the depression and most aspects of the New Deal were implemented with success with the exception of healthcare. Harvey Cushing, Chief of the President’s Medical Advisory Committee, who was also once part of the Committee on Economic Security, strongly opposed the idea of governmental control over medicine. He met with Roosevelt the night before the signing of a bill that would include federal insurance as part of the social security act. Ultimately, whatever was said that night was enough to convince FDR to not sign the bill. Cushing was not a publically know political figure but he was once quoted saying this about universal healthcare, “The chief burden of expense, when the Government enters in, always falls most heavily on the … man of modest means…[Governmental health insurance] means an elaborate organization of persons to make the system work, and some form of racket will certainly grow out of it…and even should the state take it over, it comes out of my pocket just the same.”(Schulder)
Harry Truman in 1945 again would draft a plan to have a government run healthcare program, however this proposal would be defeated. Among many factors, the American Medical Association labeled the president’s plan “socialized medicine” taking advantage of the public’s concern over communism in Russia. Even though he was never able to create a national health care program, Truman was able to draw attention to the country’s health needs, and on July 30, 1965, twenty years later, Linden B. Johnson signed the Medicare Bill, which was built on the foundation that Truman put down so many years before. Twenty years is a long time for an important issue like healthcare to go unresolved and yet the country would continue to wait. It is surprising that even with the adoption and success of socialized programs like medicare, social security, and public schooling, the country and politicians would still hesitate when universal healthcare resurfaced.
In 1963, the Senate passed a bill to provide a Medicare for all system on January 1 of that same year. One of the two primary things that would govern any policy that could have a significant impact on the U.S was an end to welfare spending. As of the time we currently know, Social Security is paid for on a monthly basis. This would lead to many questions about how to continue paying welfare for our elderly.
What If It Were Just Us: A Single Tax Would be Different For America Since the Constitution only allows states to take control over individual income taxes, states with less money need to be able to pass their own taxes back to the states for an equivalent rate of tax. If such a tax were enacted, many in the country would be struggling to pay for themselves, but it would be very hard not to wonder how the American people would be affected. As stated before, this proposal would have large economic, and even political, benefits for America since a single tax would still be the greatest revenue-generating tax plan ever seen in history. The U.S. should not get caught up in the socializing economy and the wars which have driven the U.S. to the point of economic disaster. Instead of looking at the cost of doing exactly what they were promised, we should look at the benefits they would gain by moving on to the next economic milestone.
With all the information that would be presented to us to help us understand the benefits our children, grandchildren should get after the two-percent average per ear for retirement savings. After all, the same amount of time spent in the retirement community will last much longer. This will lead to an appreciation of what goes into each year. The average American working out of retirement might just be $70,000 a year. This isn’t an idle thought. In fact, we can assume that there would be some benefit in the middle of all of this spent energy.
The Benefits for America: An Economic Model Based on Research Findings
What do you hear all the time. Do you ask yourself a question like, are there any savings stories people tell me about Medicare? Or is it that most people have no idea what they’re talking about? This article by Mike Siegelman, published in the March, 1994 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, explains where all of this might come back to bite your neck. In it, he describes the research that would be done for Medicare from the first day a Medicare enrollee’s Medicare card was printed, from the beginning in 1959 through the 1970s, over the course of his lifetime, to determine the benefit an enrollee had received and why this money was needed to pay Medicare for their children’s health care. According to Siegelman, this analysis was done on behalf of American Health Savings Accounts and Medicare Advantage plans. The program that Siegelman worked on was the Medicare Advantage System. According to Siegelman:
The original Medicare plan had no benefits for children’s health care, but this was updated later as it looked into the cost. As an elderly family got older and more and more patients became uninsured, this improved utilization began to occur, and more and more children were found in “gig-in” Medicare. In 1971, they paid $3,100 per child to buy one hundred health insurance plans, whereas in 1971, half of family members enrolled in the program didn’t have coverage.
Here’s which one would have the biggest cost savings. Let’s look a little closer. In 1962, we had one of the largest Medicare increases in U.S. history. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it gave each adult a $20
As we have seen in the past, it has been nearly impossible for a politician to bring up socialized medicine to the public due to the stigma it has carried since the Bolshevik Revolution and the Red Scare (which were both times in history when communism was used as a scare tactic by our government). More recently it has been stifled by the corporations and conservative republicans who benefit by the current system. Nixon in an attempt to re-introduce the idea of government run healthcare realized, that these organizations are too powerful and influential. Even with escalating healthcare costs (partially due to unexpectedly high medicare expenditures), rapid inflation in the economy and expansion of hospital expenses and profitsвЂ* liberals and work unions were some how convinced by these organizations that federally run healthcare was not in the “peoples” best interest. At this time medicine was growing by leaps and bounds and changes were made in medical care, including greater use of technology, medications, and recourses. This led to a conservative approach to treatment, which meant procedures and certain medicines were withheld from patients due to cost. American medicine was now seen as being in crisis.
By the 1980s there was an overall shift toward privatization and corporatization of healthcare. Unfortunately, under President Reagan, medicare began to make payments by diagnosis instead of by treatment, which in turn, prompted insurance companies to do the same. This worsened the overall state of our medical system and allowed doctors to charge more for their services and to avoid prescribing costly treatments until necessary. It was not until 1994 that socialized medicine would again be brought to the table. Healthcare was a big issue at the time since by now over thirty-five million Americans were uninsured. President Clinton appointed the first lady, Hillary Clinton as head of a task force that would rebuild our healthcare system. Although Americans were concerned about how to pay for healthcare they were satisfied with the doctors they had and the treatment they received. Therefore, the goals of the Clinton Task Force should have been to recommend changes that would maintain this quality, improve access, provide security against loss of insurance, and contain costs. The problem with this administration’s proposal was that they presented a complete overhaul of the current system so that it more closely resembled a socialized system. This plan was very complicated and many
issues and uncertainties arose. In the end the American people and politicians alike were uncomfortable with the plan, and it was not enactedвЂ* it later would be labeled as a debacle.
Many presidents have tried