Should the Government Provide Health Care - Research Proposal Example

Introduction Every person deserves to have access to quality healthcare irrespective of his or her social or economic status. This is due to the fact that failure to have it would mean that the rate of deaths arising from curable infections would be on the rise thereby denying the society manpower and potential consumers of products as it is believed that a healthy people is a healthy nation. A 2005 report indicated that approximately 40 million people and above in the US claimed that they could not afford sufficient healthcare, due to lack of finances to pay for the services (Halvorson 19). This is made worse by the fact that the country has continued to record slow economic development leading to a significant rise in the rate of unemployment, meaning that more and more people will continue to consider healthcare as a secondary necessity as compared to other needs such as food, education and shelter. This paper is a critical evaluation on whether the government should provide healthcare to its citizens. Should the Government Provide Health Care? As earlier mentioned, a healthy population is a healthy nation. This means that a country which is free of diseases stands to benefit from its human resources especially in various sectors of the economy such as Agriculture, building and construction, mining, management among others. This is due to the fact that these people earn their living by the virtue of their presence and attendance to their duties and responsibilities, which can be compromised by sickness. In this context, the government should come up with a policy of ensuring that healthcare provision especially in medical check ups is paid for by the government. This would encourage people to visit health centers on regular basis to have their checkups (Halvorson 26). Diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart infections, and tuberculosis among others would then become easy to detect and control at their earliest stages of development. This principle has been applied world wide for testing and treating infections such as HIV/AIDS and it has proved to be fruitful. It is wrong to find that medical checkup among majority of citizens is perceived as a luxury since it demands for them to dig deeper into their pockets. Consequently, infections such as those of the eyes and teeth continue to affect citizens despite the fact that they can be corrected if detected early enough. It is estimated that approximately 15 million people failed to acquire eyeglasses while another 25 million could not access dental care with regard to 2005 statistics (Halvorson 45). It is sad to note that approximately 1 billion people around the world also cannot afford to pay for their treatment due to poverty. In addition, it is estimated that at least 90 million people are impoverished each year after seeking medical treatment (Lee 31). This is a high number and the various governments around the world including US should realize that these people are bound to become unnecessary burdens for them as they will thereafter look out to the same governments for relief food, support in education among other basic necessities. If this is not forthcoming, they may end up becoming vulnerable to the extent of involving themselves in criminal activities such as terrorism, drug trafficking, armed robbery among other atrocities. In light of this, proper policing should be brought forward so that citizens can only contribute not more than 15% towards their total medical bills directly from their pockets (Lee 64). The government should maximize revenue collection especially by taxing products such as tobacco, alcohol as well as utilizing wealth taxation, to develop the sector and also to bridge the gap between the poor and the wealthy in terms of affordability of healthcare. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 was enacted in good faith, so as to enable any person suffering from an emergency, such as accident, to be treated without discrimination regardless of whether he has money to pay for the treatment or not. However, it has been observed over time that patients who do not have enough finances to acquire regular medical checkups wait until their condition becomes chronic so that they can be admitted with accordance to the act (Porter 13). Critics indicate that this has made it an expensive affair to operate under this act based on the fact that treatment is much more expensive than prevention. This means that if the government is to try and offer such remedies, it is only fair to the general public especially the tax payer that the act is removed or amended and replaced with one that cuts across all aspects of healthcare regardless of whether it is an emergency or not. On the other hand, the decision to have the government carry the burden of providing healthcare entails passing the same to the tax payer. Working citizens are already paying heavily towards the running of the government in addition to their own health insurance cover and general upkeep. Therefore, it would be oppressive to introduce a healthcare system which to critics’ discomfort will cost the taxpayer more than $900 billion in a span of 10 years (Skocpol 22). One may be forgiven for feeling bad especially if he has been taking care of himself only to be forced to pay the cost of treating irresponsible persons such as smokers, drug addicts as well as other lifestyle complications arising from conditions such as obesity. Every person in this context should carry his or her own cross i.e. to take care of their own medical expenses. If not so, the government should go ahead and come up with a way of cutting down its expenditure on departments such as defense as well as reduce the amount of foreign aid to other countries, so as to fund its own initiatives. In the year 2009 for example, the US government gave out approximately $45 billion economic and military aid, whereas this could have been used to improve the health sector (Skocpol 39). However, the government funding supposed to take care of the elderly should not be reduced, as the government allegedly intends to do, so as to offset the cost of the healthcare plan. It is important to note that a government funded healthcare system would encourage huge turnouts in the hospitals basically for services ranging from medical check ups to treatment. This would definitely mean that doctors would be required to overwork and the consequence would be poor service delivery (Lee 69). In addition, this increase in demand would affect the prices of drugs and other medical supplies by making them more expensive. Manufacturers, in this context, would be facilitated with booming business at the expense of the tax payer. To avoid this, the government should come up with a strategy to ensure that only the deserving cases are paid for from the medical kitty, but not every kind of sickness such as simple colds and cuts. In addition, it is not every person in the US who cannot afford treatment. Therefore, it should be established, by the way of conducting back ground checks on patients seeking government assistance, whether a person is capable of paying for his treatment or not before approving his or her request. Healthcare provision should be made a free market, so as to encourage competition among private practitioners, which is to the benefit of the citizens. If the government interferes with this sector, it means that these people will have to go out of business and the consequences which would follow is that more people would be discouraged from undertaking this profession especially since those employed by the government would have to work under stressful conditions and poor remuneration necessitated by the desire to reduce costs (Porter 47). This would be a negative development especially in a country such as US, which already has a low number of people willing to take up the nursing profession. In addition, there is no guarantee that the system would be free of interference by politics and politicians, who always look for opportunities to drag government initiatives so as to make the administration look bad in the eyes of the public thereby enabling them to acquire political mileage. For example, president Obama’s healthcare plan attracted heated debates between the democrats and the republicans resulting to wastage of quality time and resources (Skocpol 25). Patients do not have time to wait for politicians to define their fate and destiny, what they need is the freedom to visit any health center of their choice as at when it is important and necessary for them to do so. The signing of this bill into law by the president has not gone down well with the majority as they feel that their views were ignored. It is thus not surprising to find that the president has continued to lose popularity and rating in most of the surveys that have been conducted in the country. Conclusion Every person deserves to have access to quality healthcare. This is important for the economic development of a country as it would reduce cases of absence from work due to ailments, which could have been avoided, had the government taken plans to offer universal healthcare for its citizens. 40 million is the number of people who could not afford treatment as per 2005 reports. However, the question that arises is; where would the money come from to sustain government funded medical care? Obviously, hard working citizens would be required to contribute more taxes whereas vital government departments such as defense would be required to reduce their budget. It is true that this plan would eventually benefit the poor but in the long run, it would turn out to be oppressive and uncalled for. Not only would it result to poor delivery of service but also loss of interest in the field of medicine by scholars. The government therefore should not take the initiative of providing health care but instead, it should allow the sector to remain a free market. Works Cited 1. Halvorson, G. Health Care Reform Now! A Prescription for Change, Jossey-Bass, 2007 2. Lee, T. Chaos and Organization in Health Care, the MIT Press, 2009 3. Porter, M. Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results, Harvard Business Press, 2008 4. Skocpol, T. Health Care Reform and American Politics, Oxford University Press, 2010 Read More