Debate Over Universal Healthcare Essay

Hannah Rudzki

6 June 2023

APUSH

Debate Over Universal Healthcare in the US Time and time again, debates over universal healthcare appear in the US. This could be directly between politicians or between you and your mother in law at the dinner table. Either way, the topic remains one of some seriousness. Universal healthcare is the idea that the government would guarantee citizens quality healthcare without extreme financial hardship. There are a wide variety of ways this can be done, and almost every developed country has universal healthcare. The United States is an exception. This leads many people to believe that the United States should also have universal healthcare, but a large number of people disagree with that, and believe the US

The system becomes mixed when the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicare, and Medicaid are considered. The majority of people in the United States have something called health insurance. Health insurance protects someone from having to pay full costs when obtaining healthcare. A health insurance company is paid a certain amount (specifically calculated for the individual, based on multiple factors) usually monthly. Then, when that person has a medical bill, the insurance company will pay for a portion so that their customers don’t have to pay for everything out of pocket. In the US most obtain health insurance through their employer as a benefit. This means that their employer helps them tp pay that fee towards the insurance company. This becomes a problem because not everyone is employed, nor does every employer have health insurance as a benefit. Even in cases where someone does have good benefits, if they lose their job, then they lose

For example, in the UK, they have socialized medicine. This means the government owns the hospitals, and all healthcare workers are government employees. In this system, regular citizens pay nothing for healthcare. In Canada, they have a single-payer system. This means that the government pays for health insurance for everyone, so the government is often the one paying hospitals. This means Canadians pay little to nothing for healthcare. France has statutory health insurance, so people in the country pay little to nothing for healthcare and the government takes care of it. Switzerland does have private insurance, but it is heavily regulated and all citizens must have it. The government would help low income families that can’t afford it. While not the only countries with universal healthcare, these countries offer good examples for systems the US could set