In doing so, they fail to closely examine the policy...
Universal Health Coverage
America, right now, is facing a host of gigantic issues, both foreign and domestic. The issue of health coverage is one of the most prominent and important. It is, to me, a moral issue that almost 50 million American citizens (about 1/6 of the population) does not have any health insurance. Even more Americans do not have enough insurance to pay for important preventive care, prescription drugs, and hospital stays. Mandatory health insurance coverage (and substantative government subsidy of such) is the only way to solve this problem. There are those who will say that this is "socialism" or "socialized medicine". In doing so, they fail to closely examine the policy proposals put forth by the leading advocates of universal health in the US. The one that is most agreed upon looks like this: - All Americans must have health coverage. This is a point of some controversy, however to sustain a health system, even healthy people have to pay in in order to get benefits later. Ask any private insurer. - To accomplish this goal, three options are available to the public: 1. Make available for purchase the high-quality health plans currently offered by Congress. 2. People happy with their current coverage would/could stay with their current coverage/ 3. People currently uninsured and unable to pay could join a need-based payment (you pay what you can) health system. - To pay for this all, you: 1. By having everyone insured, hospitals no longer need to transfer their emergency room losses to Medicare patients in order to break even. This costs the government about 14 billion a year. Combine this with IT overhauls to increase efficiency and patient records management. 2. Repeal the Bush Administration's corporate subsidy taxes, income tax cuts on the top 2%, and estate tax elimination. This all saves about 60 billion per year, more than enough to pay for the above proposal. This is not socialized medicine. It is a multipayer, efficiency-based function protocol that would end up saving everyone (including the government)'s money.