Achieving Universal Health Care in the United States
by Isabel Rodriguez
Abstract
Health care has been a concern of many Americans for a very long time, whether it has been worrying about losing their job and health care coverage or trying to navigate through the complex U.S. health care system. This paper's purpose is to determine whether the barriers for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the U.S. are valid. It focuses on analyzing the validity of barriers to UHC in terms of financial costs, government failure to invest in U.S. citizens' futures, U.S. failure to make it an ethical issue, lack of support from the medical field, and opposition from American citizens. The conclusion reached after writing this paper is that the U.S. has some barriers to implementing UHC but overall the barriers that I looked into were not valid ones. However, these barriers should not prevent millions from having health care and a sense of security. Universal Health Care (UHC) refers to a program where there is health care for all. Other terms essentially mean the same thing and will be explained using the term UHC.
The current health care system in the United States is an intricate and very complex one. It is not shocking that so many people get "lost" in the system, the same one that the average American feels is a good one because a lot of money goes into it. But in reality the system isn't so great. As a matter of fact it ranks very poorly when compared to systems of other industrialized nations, so that not only makes it a low ranking system but a low ranking expensive system. Peace of mind is something millions around the world have when thinking about their health. Those millions are the citizens of nations that have universal health care. Those millions aren't Americans. Regardless of the amount of money placed into the system ("health care-related spending constitutes one sixth of the US economy, a whopping $1 trillion" Tooker, 2003) there are still millions of Americans, an estimated 40 million, without health care coverage. Additionally, millions of Americans have health insurance, but it is only for the duration of their employment or conditional depending on their employment, student, or income status. Universal health care is something that the U.S. desperately needs for numerous reasons, including saving millions each year, saving lives each year, eliminating health disparities, and acknowledging that it is a necessity for Americans. However it has been argued that there are barriers to universal health care. Are the barriers to universal health care in the U.S. valid ones? In this paper I will examine the barriers to universal health care and analyze whether they are valid. The validity is determined on whether the examination and analysis of sources has proved that this is a real issue that prevents the establishment of such a program in the United States.
One of the barriers to universal health care is financial cost. Many argue that the increased spending that the U.S. would encounter if adopting a national health insurance or health care program is one of the major reasons why the U.S. hasn't implemented such a program. It is difficult to explain how prices are placed on the lives of millions of Americans. Furthermore, these arguments of cost being a barrier to universal health care are seen as a myth by some (Lebow, 2003; Battista and McCabe, 1999). "Single payer universal health care costs would be lower than the current US system due to lower administrative costs" (Battista and McCabe, 1999). Other nations spend less money on covering all of their citizens because they save money on the administrative costs, which are extremely high in the U.S. The complexity of our current health care system leads to this increased spending because of billing issues, the public, and approximately 1,500 private health care providers. This complexity accounts for increased expenses since there are so many providers. It also makes it difficult for patients to navigate through the system and creates unnecessary paperwork for physicians and nurses. Yet many Americans think we have a pretty good health care system. "Most Americans do not realize that (a) every other industrialized developed country assures coverage for everyone and (b) despite covering everyone, they spend considerably less than we do for health care" (Lebow, 2003, p. 26). Although it is true that the quality of our care is the best in the world, because of technological advances and availability of expensive equipment, millions of Americans are sill uninsured. "Some contend that the poor performance of the. system is due to the funding. in the private sector, and that all would be well if the government would just take over funding [,but] the greater part of health care. is already funded by the tax system" (McCanne, 2004). Taxpayers' money is already going into the system. It goes into the system for years even if a person doesn't use the programs that the taxes go towards. Therefore the blame can't be passed on the private sector since a great portion of the system is run by the government with public funds. "Those who would pay the added taxes for [UHC] would benefit indirectly from it. because they would be spared the so-called cost shift by which part of the cost of the health care the uninsured do receives is said to be billed by the providers of health care to insured patients" (Reinhardt, 2003). Taxpayers, including the uninsured taxpayers, pay for the health care of the ill uninsured. Since it is common that the uninsured wait until their diseases and conditions are dire to seek health care it is more expensive to treat them (Reinhardt, 2003). So more of the taxes we pay are going to treat the advanced stages of diseases that are relatively inexpensive if treated at an earlier stage. Tax payer money is currently used for health care so it would just be a shift from tax money used to treat the uninsured in an emergency setting to tax money being used for a UHC program where tax money can be saved by treating people before conditions get worse. So it is an issue of whether we want to pay more later on or if we want to pay now and save a lot of money in the long run. It is clear that this is not a valid barrier to universal health care in the U.S., especially since the estimated savings on administrative costs are around 200 million dollars. It is also far more expensive to treat an advanced stage of illness than an earlier stage, so taxpayers would be saving and there would be savings on administration. These savings would be more than enough to cover health care for all Americans. Implementing UHC may require some additional money upfront, but those expenses would only be temporary and may even be non-existent after calculating the savings on advanced disease treatment and administration. The message that has always resounded is that it is not economically feasible in the U.S. But these sources have proven differently. Therefore this is an invalid barrier to UHC because money is not an impediment for implementing this kind of program.