The Universal Healthcare System

Over 600,000 people in the United states every year are forced to file for bankruptcy due to medical bills. The United states has the most expensive health-care system in the world. The expense per-capita in the U.S. is extremely high and unprecedented in the western world (Health Expenditure per Capita). Most first world nations have some form of universal Health Care. Universal Healthcare is a broad term that just means that every citizen can have access to healthcare. This doesn't necessarily mean that healthcare will be free for everyone, but that the government or any healthcare company can not deny healthcare to anyone. Many nations achieve these through differing means such as, Single-Payer systems, such as those in the United Kingdom
To understand what a single payer system is one must understand the other forms of healthcare and what health care actually is. The main idea behind health insurance is the same one which is behind all other forms of insurance. The idea is to assume risk into a communal “pot” rather than having some individuals with higher risk and others with lower. Political discourse over the topic of healthcare spans all the way back to its inception into the public domain. Naturally, political progressives have traditionally fought for more centralised, regulated approaches to the healthcare spectrum. Conservatives on the other hand favor more “free-market”, de-regulated approaches. There have been many pushes by the political left to instate Universal healthcare, and In 2008 succeeded when former President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. However this will most likely not make it through the trump presidency as he campaigned on the promise to repeal it. The United States prior to 2008 had a mostly free-market healthcare system. This means that private companies provided insurance as a product to consumers. Universal healthcare is more or less the same thing but taken at a more regulated approach. This includes regulations such as fines for people who don’t have insurance, prevention of healthcare companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, and giving subsidies to poorer people who would
The current universal, and previous free-market, system in the United States is bogged down by inefficient administration caused by the vast complexities of the current and previous systems. The current system is incredible reliant on administrative workers, such as actuaries, who are necessary for various tasks at insurance companies to be successful and make a profit;”as in 1999, as much as $294.3 billion was used for administrative costs, representing 31.0% of health care expenditures in America"(Single Payer 101). These administrative workers would be completely unnecessary under Single-payer legislation where profit is no longer the aim of a central healthcare provider, “We have to get over the idea that financing should be through premiums set by the actuarial value of the benefits in the insurance products. Those premiums are no longer affordable for most of us, and the complexities of income-related adjustments, whether through premium adjustments or tax credits, create an administrative nightmare.” ( McCanne). Maybe add dif quot here. Without these numerous administrative workers the cost of healthcare would drop drastically. A single payer system would also be cheaper for private companies. Currently in the United States the most popular type of healthcare is one offered as a benefit from an employer: “ Under an indemnity plan (also called