Simple, Elegant, and Wrong A topic from the very man who brought the country out of the Great Depression is again the issue of debate between many people in the US. In the 1930’s then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt along with former President Theodore Roosevelt pushed for universal healthcare reform but it was not passed because it was opposed by the American Medical Association (AMA), and almost the entire general American public as being socialist and un-American. But in 2010 the 111th congress passed the President Obama’s healthcare reform bill, this time without a public opinion. The bill calls for a healthcare modeled after those of the most industrialized countries in the world like Canada and Britain. Countries where at any given moment nearly 900,000 citizens are waiting for admission into national health service hospitals and where shortages of supplies and money cause the cancellations of over 50,000 operations a year. People in these countries may wait as long as 25 weeks for heart surgery and an average of over a year for a hip replacement. Many individuals suffer from chronic pain and may even die before they receive treatment under this type of healthcare. Obama’s universal healthcare is a mistake that will not do any good for this country and more importantly the people who live in it. Firstly, the costs associated with the law are completely outrageous. In order to expand healthcare to 45 million Americans is estimated to cost over $1 trillion. The introduction of computerized medical records and other technological changes that the law calls for would cost another $50 billion initially (Mac Askill 3). On top of that over the next 10 years the law will cost taxpayers $940 billion (Associated 1). As with all government spending the costs of the law will be completely passed onto the taxpayers. Also what costs that the government will manage to negate will come from cutbacks in other areas like, AIDS research, education spending or national security (Messerli 5). Also to compensate for the massive spending the government, starting in 2018, will apply an increased Medicare payroll tax to investment income and wages for people making over $200,000, or couples over $250,000 (Associated 2). Likewise beginning in 2018 insurance companies will pay a 40% excise tax on insurance plans worth over $27,500 for families and $10,200 for individuals. The law further creates a 10% excise tax on indoor tanning services (Jackson and Nolen 2). These new taxes mean that ultimately the entire cost of healthcare will be passed to the taxpayers. This means that the costs of the will be passed to all Americans regardless of your need for healthcare. This is morally unfair because it means that healthy people who take good care of themselves will ultimately be paying for the people who smoke, are obese, or those who drink (Messerli 6).
Next Obama’s universal healthcare limits the occupational freedoms of doctors. In government jobs there are mandated salaries and civil service tests which are required for being hired. It would also take away many private practice options, like specialization. Specialization and high pay are some of the things that attract people to the profession. If the government takes these things away then it may dissuade would-be students from putting themselves through the “torture” of medical school and residency. A study showed that 1/3 of doctors would leave the profession under these conditions (Messerli 7). Also doctors are left with large amounts of debt after medical school which is already hard enough to pay off. Universal healthcare will make it even harder, 12 to 18 years minimum (Ortega “Pro” 1).
Also universal healthcare would decrease patient flexibility. For example would the rest of America have to pay for someone’s breasts implants, hair restoration or Lasik eye surgery? Granted an easy solution to this problem would be to make patients pay for these types of surgeries but, what happens when the surgeries are needed. What if a person needs a nose job to fix a perforated septum caused by an accident, or maybe a breast reduction in order to relieve chronic pain due muscle strain in the spine? Suddenly there is a problem in determining which surgeries are needed. Also every time that the government has to make a decision another factor shows up to further complicate the matter: politics. Now every little situation will become a political battle (Messerli 5).
Another reason against Obama’s universal healthcare is that it will cause long waiting lists to see specialist as each case must be reviewed. In Britain or Canada, other countries with universal healthcare, patients are forced to wait months or years for treatments, for treatments that we can receive immediately in America. With their financial limits the government will have to decide which patients to prolong treatments and which to allow treatments (Messerli 8).
Also with universal single payer healthcare anything that is risky or unhealthy would cost more to the government and the people. Therefore in order to reduce costs the government may place higher taxes on unhealthy things like alcohol, fast food, and smoking. This leads to a “taboo” on all things that are unhealthy and a loss of personal freedoms. It also gives the government another way to control our lives (Messerli 7).
Also with government controlled healthcare can we not expect to be denied these rights due to failure to provide information, inform on others or surrender any other rights (Walsh 1). The law already calls for people who don’t buy health insurance to pay a tax for not buying healthcare from the government (Jackson and Nolen 4). The government now posses power over a crucial part of our lives. With that power it could potentially manipulate anyone that it deems necessary. The government has already done it on many occasions. For example; no selective service registration means no student loan. Late child support payments mean no drivers license (Walsh 1). As the author, poet, abolitionist, tax resister, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau once put it, in his essay on Civil Disobedience, “That government is best which governs least.” No government office runs more efficiently than any corporation in the private sector. There are many stories of the government wasting taxpayer money when it’s needed elsewhere. People see it every day, useless road construction projects when there are places in the city that are still in need of pothole, storm drain and road repairs. Or the millions of dollars spent on studying the flatulence of cows. The Internal Revenue Service, when it was created, collected only 1% from the highest income citizens. A couple years ago it published a “Tax Simplification Guide.” The guide itself was over 1,000 pages long. Another example is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Their task is extremely simple; to keep track of licenses and basic information of state residents but, the costs to support the DMV are ridiculously high. Also the DMV buildings are small in number and have extremely inconvenient hours causing large groups of people to gather. It’s similar to gridlock. After years and years none of the problems have been fixed. In the private sector if the any business failed to achieve its objectives and used ridiculous amounts of money in the wrong or unnecessary places it would never survive (Messerli 4). Can the large responsibility of people’s health really be trusted to people who can’t even manage what they have to do currently? Universal healthcare even before its start was plagued with the kickbacks and corruption that’s also present in other parts of the government. To secure 60 votes in the senate, democrats created payoffs for Nebraska, Louisiana and Florida in order to secure votes from reluctant senators. Again the good of the nation was deemed less important that politics (Messerli 8). There are also many organizations against Obama’s universal healthcare. The most prevalent of which is the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA is the largest association of physicians and medical students. The Association also opposed healthcare reform put forth by Hillary and Bill Clinton in the 1990’s (Mac Askill 2). “Many doctors are split between universal healthcare partially because it could possibly do some good.” Says Dr. Harish Chandna (Qtd. in Ortega “Against” 1). Many people also believe that without universal healthcare that those without insurance will not be able to get help when they most need it. This is not true because hospitals are legally obligated to provide cause to anyone regardless of ability to pay. Although physicians have no obligation many are not willing to deny treatment because a patient lacks insurance. People also believe that people without insurance are given a lower quality of care because of their lack of insurance. This was proven false by a study by the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago when they were unable to establish a “causal relationship” between quality of care and health insurance. They could also find “no evidence” that expanding insurance is a cost-effective way to promote health. Similarly a study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that the “health insurance status was largely unrelated to the quality of care” (Tanner and Cannon 1). There are also non-profit and government hospitals that are designed to help the uninsured (Messerli 6). The law also prohibits insurers from denying coverage or charging extra to people with pre-existing conditions or putting lifetime dollar limits onto policies. The law also allows children under age 26 to stay on their parents insurance policies (Associated 1-2). Another reason for the law is that it would make the current healthcare system more organized. The law eliminates duplicate paperwork, claim approval and insurance submission. It would eliminate the need to fill out the same questionnaire every time a patient goes to get a flu shot. It also creates a centralized national database which could help doctors make more accurate diagnosis and confirm patient history. It could also help with data analysis of the health of the overall nation. A problem is that it is a large wealth of important sensitive information that is stored in a database. What would happen if hackers got into the data? They could steal almost everything, social security numbers, bank account numbers; they could take policy numbers and siphon off millions of dollars for themselves (Messerli 3). Free or reduced medical services would also encourage people to practice preventative medicine instead of waiting for something to go wrong before inquiring about it. Lower income people usually forgo physicals and regular checkups because they are too expensive. Last year alone one in four Americans say that they or someone in their family put off medical treatment because of the cost, among uninsured people the number soars to 49% (Langer 2). Now with cheaper healthcare they will be able to go in for preventative things like mammograms and HIV tests that could prevent major problems but, also with reduced healthcare costs people are less likely to curb their drug costs and doctor visits thus causing the total costs of healthcare to be several times what they are now (Messerli 4-5). As Professor Uppinder Mehan said “It makes good sense to have a health care system that rewards preventative health than one based on the disease model, were we wait until something’s wrong then we will try and fix it.” (Qtd. In Ortega “Pro” 1). Obama’s universal healthcare is a terrible mistake that won’t do any good for this country and more importantly the people who live in it. First, it forces healthy individuals to pay the costs of people who choose to lead unhealthy lifestyles. Second, it will raise currently existing taxes and create many new ones. Third, it will cause people to have to wait for treatments that can be received immediately with the current system. In Canada, a country with universal healthcare, at this given moment there are nearly 900,000 people waiting to be admitted into a hospital where they can see a specialist. This year 50,000 people will not receive the operation that they need due to shortages of supplies and money. The journalist H.L. Mencken once said: “For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong.” Obama’s universal healthcare is exactly that.

By Nathan L.