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Karyn, Destiny, Jazlyn, and Madison Professor Abad English 104 4 May 2020 Mass Murder Disguised as Free Healthcare The studies of health and medicine are evolutionary fields, where specialized practitioners, researchers, and educators ensure they can continue winning the battle with evolutionary bacteria and viruses, solved disease, and other atrophic conditions. Each individual who devotes their life to the field pertains knowledge which transcends what the average individual could comprehend: they are valuable individuals who must be present to maintain a sustainable society. Universal health care appears to be an attractive program should be implemented in every country; however, there are underlying flaws of applying for such a program in the United States. The inevitable failure resides behind the expectations of the majority, who believe universal healthcare is a cheap, convenient, and easy approach to satisfy their medical needs. The cost of universal healthcare is not only paid by taxpayers, but the costs sacrifice medical research and urgent care facilities, who have to compromise their time and government funds so more people are permitted in hospitals. The affordable nature of universal health care leads to the financial burden of everyone involved, decelerates medicinal research, and may ironically endanger the masses of patients who receive it if it were implemented. The costs, both monetary and physical, of universal healthcare are doomed to compromise several other programs contribute towards the betterment of the United States in exchange for a health service placed in a hospital, a visit widely mistaken to be required for healthy human living.
Any form of healthcare is not free, just as any other service is not free. If you are not paying for a good or service upfront, it is done through passive transactions. In the case of free healthcare, the government is allocating taxpayer money to provide citizen’s basic medical coverage; however, the coverage leads to the compromise of another aspect of our civilization. It is estimated, three trillion dollars would have to be invested by the US government in order to sustain universal healthcare. The coverage costs are significantly more than other developed countries who have successfully executed universal healthcare because the US population is significantly larger and therefore more people are required to be insured by the government. The immense expenses will surely compromise other programs which are vital to the sustainability of the United States, such as its military, welfare, and social security programs. In the case where the funds could be provided for universal healthcare, increased government support would benefit other divisions in the country, such as free college education or public services. “The Campaign for Free College Tuition released a report Friday, which estimates states would lose out on anywhere between $42.8 million (Delaware) and $4.96 billion (California) in tuition revenue in the first year if public college were to become free”(Berman 1). The expenses for free college tuition is minute compared to the immense three trillion dollar estimate for universal healthcare. With free college tuition, educational facilities will enhance the country by increasing the educated population as well as contributing to a cleaner environment for everyone concerned. In the long term, a more educated population can further research into affordable alternatives to the hospital, such as home-bound remedies and natural, self-conducted treatments. A form of preventive care is possible with enough invested in medicinal research, where hospitals can be an option and not a necessity which universal health coverage policies assume it to be. Government
investments put into research and development of medicine will decline to cover for the single-payer program. A minor decrease in 2017 already brought concerns towards past situations facilities continue to investigate solutions for, such as opioid addiction: Such slowdowns in spending are of significant concern during the current public health crisis of opioid addiction. Research into addiction has thus far yielded 2 key tools can be used in combatting the effects of addiction: opioid overdose reversal emergency injections and medication-assisted therapies. However, the scale of opioid addiction in the United States requires additional therapies, and significant investment into prevention and treatment of addiction will be key to solving the issue of the epidemic. (Davio 3) The progressive solutions medicinal research facilities provide should be valued by society for what accomplishments they have been taking for granted. It should be realized the severe importance of continued investments in fast-paced research with the present COVID- pandemic, as hospitals would not be able to find diagnostic kits and possible antibiotics to fight against the virus if it had not been for the faculty investing their time into finding and testing possible solutions. Universal healthcare glorifies the concept of healthcare without charges when the charges are actually relocated, distributed in the citizens’ taxes, taxes which are allocated in particular programs and organizations according to what voters find most important. Medicinal researchers in America are the underdogs who make healthcare as desirable as it is and should not be sacrificed to the blind pursuit towards a non-advancing healthcare system. Anyone in the medical department deserves the utmost respect for their commitment to the field. Professional practitioners and medical staff are paid by the government just as much as they would be paid under a private company; however, no one addresses the substantial increase
of work a doctor receives under a universal healthcare system. Take America’s justice system for example, where there are private attorneys and public defenders. “The biggest problem with a public defender is their caseload...a public defender has 25% less time to devote to a case than is necessary to do a thorough job...you are not only more likely to go to jail if you have a public defender but you are also more likely to serve a longer sentence” (Bank 1). A public defender, who represents their client for free, cannot give the client the consultation they need prior to trial nor are the defenders given enough time between trials to be able to examine the case thoroughly. Although other countries have demonstrated monetary savings under a public healthcare system, the United States is put under different conditions, where it has a bigger population, isolated geography, and diversity unheard of in other countries. Under a universal healthcare system, each doctor is put under the same strain if not worse due to higher demand and importance for health versus law enforcement and court cases. In the aforementioned situation, a doctor would be giving each patient less attention than what they need, potentially forced to give up on a patient due to their packed appointment schedules. One cannot deny the evident wait times present in countries with mixed or public healthcare systems: [B]etween 25,456 and 63,090 (with a middle value of 44,273) Canadian women may have died as a result of increased wait times between 1993 and 2009. This estimated increase in the Canadian mortality rate associated with waiting for medical treatment was unnecessary and is the result of a health policy regime imposing longer wait times on Canadians than are found in the universal access healthcare systems of other developed nations. (Barua 48)
imperative to realize the empty and expensive promises they recall simply distribute its prices throughout our other financial burdens without good cause.
