Health care should be free - Research Paper Example

The government should provide a basic level of health care to all citizens and allow the affording to purchase quick, more efficient, or a higher quality service, though the quality of medical health services provided to the poor should be comparable to that available to the rich in any case. Countries in which the private health care has become the norm have a great number of citizens without insurance. Millions of people in the US either have no insurance or are underinsured because of a variety of reasons including lack of employment and poor economy.

If the health care system is made free, people would not be denied the service just because they cannot pay for it. Everyone would have access to all kinds of medical services irrespective of the financial status. The government should establish a network of community health centers so that health care becomes accessible to all communities across the country (Zwegenthal et al, 2009, p. 4). Making the health care system free is a potential way of bringing the overall costs of the health care down.

Countries that have a public health care system instead of one that is sponsored by the state usually spend a much larger amount of their gross national profit over providing the health care. As a result of this, the free market system places the need for increased expenditure on the administrative costs. This increases the insurance premiums and raises the costs for the expenses paid out of pocket for the medication after meeting the insurance deductible. One way to resolve this issue is by using co-insurance and deductibles, but these mechanisms require the imposition of restrictions to ensure the provision of health care to the financial strained.

“And since cost sharing can have an adverse effect on the health of the poor, these and certain other groups should be exempt from sharing the cost of care altogether” (Harris and Manning, 2007, p. 80). Making health care free is an important way of reducing the cost of medical care since the competition would be eradicated under the single administration. Presently, because of the availability of a variety of health care plans, claims and procedures are often duplicated. Free health care system would save the time that is otherwise consumed in processing the claims, thus making the system more efficient.

Free health care system can be administered more easily with lesser cost. The need for the employers to incur expenditures by providing their employees with insurance would be obviated. Placement of the health care system under the single administration would also obviate the need for contractual negotiations. It is noteworthy here that different free health care systems function differently. For example, the health care system in Canada is different from the health care system in the UK. Which out of a certain number of free health care systems are superior or inferior to the others is eventually determined by the consumers.

The infant mortality rate of the US is high while the life span is shorter as compared to many countries around the world (Kongaika, 2013). This can partly be attributed to the fact that many Americans do not get the