Health Care and Society
Whenever the U.S. government saw something that people can’t live without get out of hand, people in the government stepped in on behalf of the people. Water, electricity and phones are all good examples… of course gas is a bad example. Our society cannot survive without the water that pumps into your houses and gets flushed away or the electricity that keeps your water heater, fridge, air conditioning and heat on… well some people can survive but the amount of people that this country supports could not be supplied with potable water without the government regulated system. Since people cannot live without water, it would be profitable to keep raising prices and without someone to speak out for the people, we all (well all us not wealthy people), would be suffering for people to just make a profit.
What does this have to do with health care? Well we have all been living much longer than we would have without our medical advances, many people that contribute to society would be dead by 30, and hardly any of them surviving to 60. With this increased age, we are all experiencing the side effects of living longer by showing many health problems that just wouldn’t there if you were dead by now. The short answer is that we need health care to live, just as we need potable water and electricity. Should we not as a people be demanding that like other basic needs, the need to live should have advocates and regulations to ensure that all of us can have it?
Social programs do not a socialist empire make. Just because a nation has social programs, it doesn’t mean that the country is socialist. Just like when a country has capitalistic programs it doesn’t make the country capitalistic. The problem is that we are all a part of this society, this society that makes us all interdependent on each other in so many complex ways. So let’s try to think of it in basic terms: we do not all hunt for food for ourselves, we do not all farm for ourselves, we do not all fetch water for ourselves and we do not all build our own houses. That means we are all dependent on other people to play their part in our society, that also means that other people are dependent on you. If you want to reap the rewards of our society, then you should be expected to reward others as well. The everyone can help themselves attitude is not what built our society to this point, it only hurts society… and by proxy, you. Unless you’re very rich.
The truth is that we all need to help each other so that other people can help us. When a factory worker gets injured, we lose that piece of society until they come back to work. If that factory worker can’t afford to get better in order to get back to work, then we lose that piece of society permanently. We lose that person’s ability to spend money, the products that person was working on… pretty much everything that person was contributing to society. Let’s say the cost to get that person back is a $50,000 surgery… sounds like a lot, but this person was making $40,000 a year. Now the factory worker wouldn’t be able to pay the medical bill straight up, but his contributions to society are about the same as his wages, so he will pay society back in less than two years… if he/she can work. So I see a one time surgery of $50,000 a bargain in the long term.
March 24th, 20109:08 pm at
The US Gov’t is killin’ me. Can’t everyone notice that this monster of a bill will increase taxes for everybody and even invent brand new ones for all of us?
March 27th, 201010:56 am at
As far as taxes increasing, I really don’t see that so much as an issue. I work in the medical field. There are so many people without insurance, or without adequate medical coverage, that we as tax payers pick up the bill when the uninsured need medical treatment and have no way of paying for it. And if you think about it logically, if a person doesn’t have medical coverage and they get sick, instead of going to a doctor, they are more likely to go to a county ER or something like that which will treat anyone regardless of medical coverage or ability to pay. This not only causes congestion in our ER’s because they are being treated as a primary care office instead of being utilized for emergencies, but also is less cost efficient than being treated in a doctor’s office for non-emergent issues. And though we as tax payers are not currently spending tax dollars on a “Health Care Bill” we are paying just as much if not more as tax payers for the lack of insurance in this country. We do end up fronting the bill as tax payers to keep our hospitals operational. Most people just don’t think about it because many Americans are too closed minded to look outside of themselves at how the world effects someone besides themselves or their immediate families.
The other financial aspect of the health care bill should not be ignored either. Think about how much health insurance costs. Some of us are very lucky to have great health care at a reasonable cost. That is not the case for the majority of this country. Health care is way too expensive. And not only are people paying thousands and thousands of dollars a year for health coverage, but then if they do get sick or injured and need that insurance, often the coverage is not what they expected. When someone has a long term disease or illness the medications alone are ridiculously expensive. Speaking from the point of someone who watched a parent go through leukemia, and a bone marrow transplant for 4 years, I can attest to how ridiculous the costs for stuff like that is. My father came home from the hospital after his transplant with like 20 meds he had to take on a daily basis. One of them alone cost like $1000 a dose. That’s $30,000 a month in prescription meds, for one prescription– not to mention the 19 others or so. I don’t mean to go on too long of a diatribe, but my point is that with the way the health care system is now, there is no regulation. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and health care providers can charge whatever they want. Once there is some regulation that won’t be the case. Also, if everyone in the country is insured, these corporations probably won’t feel the need to rape their customers in order to stay afloat. Bottom line, health care will in the end, be more affordable for everyone, including those who are already currently insured.
The last point I would like to touch on is quite simple. If we have the means to treat the sick and injured in our country, we need to do so. Every person deserves proper healthcare. If you don’t see that, you are just inhumane.
April 18th, 201011:23 pm at
Hopefully with the health reform bill passing, we will all have access to better health care.
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