Health Care Debate Essay

On Monday, April 25 I attended the Health Care Debate: Market vs. Government Solutions lectured by Gregg Robinson and Scott McGann. The debaters brought forward many interesting points and believes, Doctor Robinson mentions that the US spends about 2,919,000 million dollars on healthcare every year which is roughly about $8,745 per person. Doctor Robinson also mentions how we pay about 17% of our GDP on healthcare, which is more than any other industrialized country, but yet we have the worst healthcare. In his conclusion Dr. Robinson made it well known that he believes that we should switch to a third party payment system. In the other hand Professor McGann, mention that a third party payment system would lower cost, but it would also lower coverage, not only because the cost would go down but also because there would be a lack of competition. Professor McGann also brought up that ever since the affordable care act when into effect insurance companies started charging a lot more for minimal coverage.
One thing I learned while attending this lecture was the 80/20 rule which refers to 20% of the population accounts for 80% of expenses. Half the population has virtually no medical expenses, and we usually
spend the most money on healthcare when we are about to die.
One thing I liked about the presentation was how Professor McGann mentions how the healthcare system is bad, but it does not mean we should give the government all the power to control our healthcare system (E.G. ObamaCare/ Affordable Care Act), he also mentions how that would not make the healthcare system any better. One thing I did not like was how Dr. Robinson didn’t really mention any of the downfall of a single payer system (E.G. longer waits, higher taxes, less coverage, no family doctors only emergency room).
For my last Political Economy week lecture I had the pleasure of attending the Liberal-Conservative Economic Debate lectured by Scott McGann and Dr.
William Commings on Wednesday April 27 2016. In this debate both professor McGann and Dr. Commings provided us with their believes on many different ongoing topics that affect all of us today. For example, the first topic that was brought forward was flat taxes, professor McGann was very adamant that the government should tax everybody the same amount which pretty much means that everybody pays the same percentage of their income to the government. In the other hand Dr. Commings mention that 10% of a poor man’s income is very important, but 10% of a rich man's income not so much. So a flat tax wouldn’t be
fair.
One thing I really liked about this lecture was the ability to ask questions both professor McGann and Dr. commings did not spend much time going off topic they used the time we were given wisely and allowed everybody who had pressing questions to ask and get an answer.
One thing I did not like was the fact that Dr. Commings did not think the national debt is a priority or problem. When we are 19,258,985,233,507 trillion dollars in debt I believe that paying off the National debt should be a priority.
In conclusion I really enjoyed political week it was very informative and interesting.