Ok, so I've done music and movies, so what's next for my amazing new blog? Time for politics! To begin--my thoughts on healthcare and healthcare reform. Ok so close to 50 million Americans have no healthcare and are forced to pay for their healthcare out of pocket (or not pay at all if they cannot afford emergency treatment). That, ladies and gentlemen, is a sin. You can't put a price on someone's health. Yes I know it's a capitalist society, and people should make their own money and spend it on health insurance. But there are too many people in low income jobs that simply cannot afford the added expense of health care. And, like I said, you can't put a price, or even a capitalist ideology, over someone's health. So where do we go from there?
There are many different solutions to this problem, with pretty much all involving government intervention. The first, and seemingly most popular approach around the country right now, is Social Health care. In a social health care system, the government would provide basic healthcare for each and every citizen of the United States. I have discovered that there are two ways to approach this. The first of these would be for the government to offer the ability for a private healthcare company to sponsor the healthcare program in the entire country. This private healthcare company would be chosen by whichever one can offer the best deal. The second way of doing this would be to bypass private health insurance companies altogether, and created a government-funded organization, or even an entirely new branch of government ("Department of Healthcare" anyone?) that would completely organize and provide all of the government-funded healthcare. In both of these scenarios, there would be an option for anyone with the money to opt out of the government-funded system, choosing instead to purchase their own private healthcare.
This all sounds great on paper. It would definitely provide the healthcare services we need, and be able to insure the close to 50 million Americans who are currently uninsured. It would leave no one without healthcare, and hospitals would no longer be forced to suck up the bills of patients who cannot pay. But there is one major, major flaw with this system. If we went with the first option, where the government sponsored health insurance is provided by the private insurance company that can give the best deal, a huge monopoly over the insurance industry would be created. There's no way that any other healthcare provider could compete with a company that provides all of the government sponsored healthcare, and they would all go bankrupt, leaving one health insurance provider. However, the second option poses the exact same problem to all of the private health insurance companies, as a government-funded program that provides health insurance would almost certainly force all of the private insurance companies into bankruptcy, leaving the government in complete control of the industry. With the way our economy is right now, the last thing we need is for some of the biggest businesses in our nation to go under, leaving thousands more unemployed, and hurting both wall street and our economy in general.
However, I believe that there is an option in which we could avoid this horrible inevitability. I call it the "John McCain option". Now I only realized how much sense this plan made after the election, but looking back on it, it really makes a lot of sense. In this plan, the government would provide money to citizens that would have to be put towards health insurance (there could be a points system or something so that people don't go spending the money on other things). In this option, people can go out and search for the healthcare plan that best fits their needs, and would be able to choose from a variety of companies with a variety of healthcare plans. This would spread the money across the different private insurance companies, and would restore competition between the companies, in effect keeping their prices down and preventing a monopoly over the industry. Different amounts of money (or points) could be given to different families depending on their need and current income level. This option would provide healthcare to all citizens, while keeping these private healthcare providers (and our economy in general) intact.
And that's my thoughts on healthcare. Feel free to post your opinions on it under the "comments" section.
