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FACT: Currently 46 million Americans live without any health care insurance whatsoever. FACT: The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide health care insurance for all of its citizens. FACT: The United States spends more money per person on health care than any other nation in the world. FACT: The World Health Care Organization has ranked the United States 37 th in the world regarding the health care a country provides for its people. FACT: No country in the history of the earth has provided universal health care coverage for all its citizens under a private health care insurance system. The facts stated above are not only embarrassing and frightening; they are simply unacceptable.
How our country, which takes great pleasure in calling itself The Worlds Only Superpower, is unable to provide health care for all its citizens is unfathomable. The citizens of countries in Western Europe have benefited from universal health care polices for almost 40 to 50 years now. Why cant all of the citizens in America enjoy the same benefits? Especially, at a time our country is in the midst of its greatest economic boom to date. The answer is simple enough. What stands between the citizens of America and a fair, equal and effective national health care policy is one basic human emotion, or lack there of, greed.
There is a huge disparity in the distribution of health care in America. Most notably between rich and poor but also between the races. 11 percent of the white population lives without health insurance. That is already a troubling number but it pales in comparison to the 21 percent of African-Americans, 21 percent of Asian-Americans and 33 percent of Hispanic-Americans that lack proper health care insurance. Lack of coverage is not the only problem in our current privatized health care system. There are also huge problems in the coverage for prescription drugs, dental, vision and hearing care, mental health care, preventive care for children, and treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. Health care in our nation should be provided directly by the federal government under what is known as a single-payer health care system.
It is a program that would cover Americans from the cradle to the grave. In our current system, hundreds of billions of dollars go to insurance company overheads, unnecessary administration costs, huge profits, high salaries at bloated HMOs, and other for-profit health care companies. Studies have proven that the money saved by the cutting the previously mentioned wastes would be sufficient to provide universal coverage for the amount we are now paying for our current, inadequate system. One example of a single-payer health care proposal that is already out is entitled Physicians Proposal and was first published in New England Journal of Medicine in 1989 and then later in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1991. Under this plan every citizen would be covered for all necessary medical procedures including rehabilitative, long-term care, mental health care, dental care, prescription drugs, and medical supplies. Under the plan, every person would have access to local personalized care from the doctor of his or her choice.
Physicians would still operate in the private sector; the whole scheme would provide for different payment structures for health care providers, this would be to minimize the disruption of the existing system. The scheme would be designed to prevent profit motives from affecting doctors decisions. Gone would be the incentives that HMOs give their doctors for NOT recommending treatment for patients. The largest obstacle between you and me, the American citizen, and universal health care insurance is corporate greed. Jamie Court and Francis Smith have authored an intelligent and well-researched study entitled Making A Killing: HMOs and the Threat to Your Health. In it they state that American medicine is currently in the clutches of the avarice of the free market.
The doctor-patient relationship and its concomitant social values of trust and confidentiality have been eroded by the search for profits, " they write. HMO doctors often have their decisions on patients treatment overruled by uneducated bureaucrats in offices across the country that are only trying to save a buck. The constant search by the HMO bureaucrats for profits not only denies sometimes vital care it wastes vast amounts of resources. America spends more than any other country in the world providing health care and it is estimated that 20 to 30 percent of that money goes towards corporate overhead and profits. Their practice of profits-before-patients lends quickly to corporate dominated medicine that is only concerned with the bottom line.
Neither of the two major candidates in this fall presidential election is in favor of a national single-payer health care reform plan. Governor Bush is in favor a $ 2, 000 tax credit for needy families who are in search of health care insurance. That number is just a pittance next to the stratospheric health costs that come along with any extended stay at a medical facility. Vice President Gore says he is in favor of step by step movement towards universal heath care; the same universal health care that he and President Clinton both promised to provide to all Americans 8 years ago in 1992. Since 1992, there has been an 11 million person increase in Americans without any health insurance at all. Sounds more like a step backwards than a step towards universal care for all.
The only candidate that stands firmly behind a single-payer system, the only candidate who stands courageously in the destructive path of Big Business, the only candidate who is willing to take a stand, draw a line in the sand, and declare once and for all that health care is a basic innate human right is the Green Party Nominee, Ralph Nader. The Declaration of Independence states that all people have the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Do you think that our founding fathers who didnt have available to them the amazing health care treatments and techniques that we now have available to us would want us to reserve their benefits only for the rich? If asked the same question what is your response?
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Research essay sample on Health Care Insurance Health Care System
