Obamacare: The Role Of Health Care Reform In The United States

Josue Lopez
EN-101
04/25/2012

Today health care reform in the United States is an ongoing battle on Capitol Hill. In 2009 the United States spent around $8,000 per person on health care, that’s 17.6% of our product which is double the amount other industrialized countries spend on health care. Other countries deliver the exact same type of care the United States does but at half the cost. What does this mean about the health care system in place now? This means that there must be some kind of health care reform in the United States. The president has constructed a plan called Obamacare, but this plan will cost the American people more if they do not abide by the individual mandate. If Obamacare is overturned by the Supreme Court it leaves
the United States with other options like the single payer system that is currently place in Canada. The single payer system is health care that is funded from a single public insurance pool and the pool is funded by a mix of employees, employers, and the government. Health care should be reformed, but into a more reasonable, efficient and cost effective system like the single payer system so everyone has access to health care. The United States is currently switching to Obamacare but the bill won’t be fully implemented for a number of years, but until then the people have to make the decision between medical bankruptcy and poor health.
Other industrialized countries have their governments argue with health care providers, drug companies, and other people that play a part in health care costs. “In countries like Canada and Britain prices are set by the government. In other countries, like Germany and Japan, they are set by providers and insurers sitting in a room and coming to an agreement, with the government stepping in to set prices if they fail.”(Klein) America spends too much on health care and has made the system into capitalism at its finest. The government needs to step in and start negotiating with drug companies and hospitals and insurers to bring down the high costs. Doctors in the United States get paid more than any other doctors in the world, and patients get charged more if they want to see a specialist, but in other countries they’re small costs stay the same whether they see a specialist or not. The United States is leading the world in medical spending and because of the high costs 50 million Americans remain uninsured and dealing with ailments that they cannot afford to have
fixed. In industrialized countries like Britain, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, and Switzerland patients going bankrupt from medical expenses is something that is just unheard of. The single payer system would involve higher taxes and the elimination of deductibles and copayments. With the single payer system no one would be turned away if they had a preexisting condition and people would still have choices and could decide to go see any doctor they wanted to. Sixty percent of the cost of single payer would be paid by the people the other forty percent would be paid for by a combination of employee payroll taxes, employer taxes, health tax from the top 5% earners, health taxes for top 1% earners and taxes on stock and bond transfer. With the single payer system in place employers would no longer have to worry about insuring all of their employees because single payer covers everyone including the unemployed. The president’s plan known as Obamacare requires everyone to buy some kind of insurance or face a penalty at the end of the year. In 2016 the penalty for an individual without health care would be $695, or up to $2085 per family, or 2.5% of household income. The penalty is waived under some circumstances the most common circumstance being financial hardship. This health care reform is going to cost the United States $940 billion dollars over the first ten years and is expected to cut down the deficit by $143 billion within the first ten years once it is fully implemented. While coverage does expand to more people who were uninsured before Obamacare, it does not cover those who still cannot be insured even with Obamacare in place. So this reform still has many holes and cannot cover all the bases when it comes to a solid health care plan.
With every good thing that comes with the single payer system the bad is not too far behind it.
The government does not want to switch to this health care plan for a couple of reasons, one being that this would give the government too much control in our lives by letting them have control of hospitals and doctors. The other concern that the government has is the waiting periods that patients have to endure in emergency rooms and in clinics for minor injuries. The government is also concerned with the fact that by passing such a health care system would lead the nation down the slippery slope of socialism, kind of like how the United States thought if Vietnam fell to communism the whole world would become
communist.
American companies spend more time worrying about the cost of health care insurance than on the innovations that could be happening with the current treatments we provide. Americans spend thirty cents of every dollar on just health insurance paperwork and Insurance Company CEOs get big bonuses every time someone is denied coverage. Today insurance companies spend 40% of premiums on marketing and bonuses for said CEO’s and deny coverage for infants with “preexisting conditions “such as diabetes and asthma. The same people who shoot down any ideas of a universal health care system are the same who think evolution should not be taught in schools, yet by not having a single payer system we are following Charles Darwin’s theory by creating their own kind of natural selection through the health care system. The United States currently pays around 30% more than any other country in the world for name brand drugs; the government has also made it illegal for Medicare to negotiate fair drug prices for seniors. The people of Canada and England have been proven to live at least two years longer than the average American. Americans should not have to file for bankruptcy because of medicals costs; they should receive quality health care at affordable costs and not the other way around.