Those answers can vary in reason and motive. America has been searching for an answer for our worsening economy as we enter a recession. An answer that has been tossed around last quite often is a universal healthcare sponsored by the US government. This universal healthcare is known the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or informally known as ObamaCare. President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010.
The reason that this is significant is because of all the seemingly positive affects actually turning out to be negative.The law has barely skimmed through the Senate and the House of Representative making it a controversial topic. A question about ObamaCare that continues to reappear is: will this really benefit our healthcare now and is it what America really wants? The universal healthcare is a naive and basic answer that will not support the needs of the individual and should not even be taken into consideration. The current number of uninsured Americans continues to rise and the number of illegal immigrants uninsured is not much better.
With a system such as ObamaCare put to use this number would decrease and America would face a healthcare where we are theoretically better covered. The number of uninsured Americans is at point to where there is no bright side but Matthew Buettgens’ research says, “The legislation would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by about 32 million people by 2019. Most of those gains in the number of insured will not occur until after 2014 when the mandates and subsidies kick in” (Buettgens 4). The goal ultimately is to help the number of uninsured Americans decrease and with a plan like that it seems like a possibility.Another positive outcome of the new reform is that doctors would be able to focus more on their job.
Some doctors are finding it harder and harder to do their job under the certain circumstances. Doctors can concentrate on healing the patient rather than on insurance procedures. The following is an example of some of the positive effects, “Doctors have to take classes now simply to understand all the insurance plans. Some physicians are even leaving the profession rather than deal with all these non-medical headaches.A simplified universal health system would allow doctors to simply focus on doing what's best for the patient” (Leonard 3).
Medicine is a complex enough subject as it is. Our current system just adds to an already mentally draining profession. The price of healthcare is becoming increasingly unaffordable for businesses and individuals. With the reform it would eventually get to the point where it would be inexpensive to even those who are considered low class citizens. Another bonus of the reform is patients with pre-existing conditions can still get health coverage.
It does not take away from those who are already experiencing existing medical problems. In today’s world switching healthcares is extraordinarily difficult with pre-existing conditions. Some insurance companies will not even give a policy to such individuals, or if they do, they will cover everything but their past diagnosed conditions. Anyone with an expensive illness or disease must then often face one of two choices; use up all their own money or leave the condition untreated. In a universal system, no one with a pre-existing condition would be denied coverage.
People could change jobs without fearing the loss of health insurance. America is, to the surprise of many, one of the few remaining countries to be considered a first world country and not use some type of universal healthcare. An example of a long term country that has been using a healthcare similar to newest reform is Taiwan. People of the Taiwanese race are not richest but yet they have economic stability. Healthcare does not add or subtract from how well they do as a nation in other aspects of their country and that is a direction that American leaders should be looking into.
According to Jui-Fen Lu and contributing authors the way Taiwan operates their health care is by offering every citizen nearly equal financial access to comprehensive health services and provides all citizens with financial risk protection from large medical expenses (Lu 1). At the same time, it gives patients the right to freely choose their providers and hospitals and physicians to freely choose their practice mode and be paid on a fee-for-service basis. Even though there are several legitimate reasons to put this law in place the negatives aspects are powerful.A negative factor is a government-controlled health care would lead to a decrease in patient flexibility. The following is an example of what Obamacare can be made out to be but it really is not.
“At first it would appear universal health care would increase flexibility. However other things come into play such as what is considered necessary” (Garner 2). Is a nose job considered necessary? Who will control what the healthcare should cover and should not. These are all things to consider when making a universal plan. A “one-size fits all” is not all too flashy when you actually find someone who does not fit the bill.A summary of another article is whenever you have government control of something, you have one item added to the equation that will most definitely screw things up and that happens to be politics.
Everything would have to go through a political view and it becomes one big hectic debate about whether a woman should be able to get a nose job underneath this new healthcare (Welch 4). The compromises that result will put in controls that limit patient options. The following is just an example of some problems with Obamacare, “The universal system in Canada forces patients to wait over 6 months for a routine pap smear.Canada residents will often come to the United States or offer additional money to get their health needs examined” (Kaplan 3). When citizens in the US aren’t covered to get certain procedures or operations will they have to travel to proceed with what they want done.
This will be a major flaw in the healthcare system. Healthy people who take care of themselves will have to pay for the burden of those who smoke, are obese, or whatever the unhealthy habit may be. America as a country is a known for the harder you work, the further you will make it in life. Your individual success comes from you and you only.
That being said the fact that someone who has worked hard for everything they have has to put up money for not only themselves but maybe for someone who does not even deserve it. Fundamentally that is not fair. Our country was built upon fairness yet we are going in the totally opposite direction. Your health is greatly determined by your lifestyle.
If you take good care of yourself then you should not have to deal with those who do not. It is a personal choice that we all make. Those who go out of their way to eat right and exercise along with not having factors in their live such as smoking and drinking tend to be healthier.That is a fact. Nobody can say otherwise.
There does come a point where everyone is going to need a doctor but there also comes a point that some people do not even feel the need for having an insurance plan. ObamaCare is like having a insurance that does not cover as much as other insurances but you do get to save a quick dollar and you are covered in some areas when it comes to treatment and medicine. It is quite apparent that with the way the Act is planned there will be less incentive to pursue research in areas such as medicine in an effort to cut costs, salaries, medical equipment, and medical services.Medical related research and development would be a thing of the past. Where will that leave us as a country? Regardless of whether medical costs are paid for publicly or privately, the costs are extremely expensive and going higher every year. Rising costs of drugs, diagnostic tests, advanced treatments, physician and the salaries of those in the medical field, and so on all contribute to the skyrocketing overall amount of money spent.
Politicians are likely to jump in and try to limit costs by putting in price caps on various items they think are excessively profitable.This makes the importance of drug research irrelevant. It may take a single type of drug years to develop. That means sometimes a company may spend millions of dollars without seeing a single penny of profit.
So why would a company stay in that kind of a situation? Once the development of the drug is complete and it is finally ready for the market, the company can finally plan to make an extreme amount of profit. Though that seems like a full proof plan with the lack of importance in medicine rising no one is going to pay for their new drug thus halting medical research and the expansion of our knowledge about sicknesses.This is not what should lay ahead for us as a country. At this point in time we should not be looking into alternatives yet fixing a economy that was once fine as it was. Problems arise even when good plans are put into action and we have been facing problems.
There is no denying that but in a system such as ObamaCare it is only going to get worse before it gets better. Who knows how long it will take for this plan to actually have a huge positive impact on our country but the real questions are: will it be soon enough and will it pull us through a recession?If a whole nation is walking the line with such a plan will it be supported in full? The answer is no. ObamaCare is not the answer for a country as great as ours. A country such as ours should not even have to use the word settle.
Settling is for the fragile. We are strong nation undergoing a time of disorder. Change is what we are about. It is time for change.
Let the change be the best it can be in order to pave a bright future for those who will walk the path generations later. Let the change be astonishing.
