Universal Healthcare Now!

Republicans want to do away with gains made in the last decade with the Obama administration. The Republican plan is to do away with cutting the number of uninsured people in the US. Obamacare leaves 30 million people not covered, however, and leaves middle-class Americans with a higher insurance premium to pay off. The United States spends more money on health care than say Japan, who spends too little money on health care while we make many excuses as to why we do not have cheaper healthcare because of the insane prices of prescription medication. Single-payer healthcare is something that scares those Republicans because the government is supposed to regulate the cost of prescriptions as well as medical services. They are terrified of having anything better that serves the people. This is why extremists have to start letting go of extremist perspectives.

Americans have publicly funded health care in full or part. 28th in healthcare, the United States’ ranking is abysmal. When are we going to stop dragging our feet on this? Believe it or not, during the turn of the century there was an attempt to socialize medicine but with opposition from doctors, insurance companies, businesses, and some conservative worker organizations, socialized medicine was considered patronizing to the American people as well as deeply unnecessary. The resistance to healthcare is astounding as we still have some of these people getting in the way of legislation coming up with new policies.

This is the kind of resistance we activists are dealing with. In the 1930s, businesses started to offer health care compensation when they had to fend off a freeze on labor wages in 1934 under President Roosevelt. There was opposition by opponents of governor Earl Warren’s attempt to introduce mandated healthcare paid for by social security which eventually became social security benefits in the present, which is the closest thing we have to universal healthcare in the 21st century. There is no labor party in the United States that represents a working class. Also, in modern times, when I ask my own doctors about insurance many times, they do not understand how insurance works. My endo did remark on me getting a PPO to keep her and find another psychiatrist.

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act began integration and in 1965, Medicare/Medicaid started government insurance for the poor as well as elderly. Even in the present, African Americans are the most likely not to have insurance. So the inner battlefield remains, should I get insurance or not? This is what is on many people’s minds when they look at the health care crisis. Can I afford it? The quiet war to bring back to the pre-existing condition clause is back. They really want to reinforce this backward rule. It is up to us to fight them on that rule. Nobody takes health care reform seriously in the United States if only because nobody sees single-payer as an option and a well-informed option at that. Also, lazy people do not want to pay higher taxes.

Healthcare is expensive because pharmaceutical companies want it that way irrespective of the fact that government would be the single-paying entity that would want to take care of this overarching problem. Politicians are afraid of a single-payer system because they would lose the ability to have economic power over the people who use health insurance as it is now. The United States, despite our prosperity, doesn’t want to let go of the past or start a new health care system in general. We are stubborn fools that force our citizens to pay for their healthcare in demeaning ways. There are many people who need insurance to pay for their healthcare give or take the way they do not necessarily have it.

Works Cited

A History of Why the US Is the Only Rich Country Without Universal Healthcare