The Need For Universal Health Care Essay -- Medicine Medical Essays Ar

The Need For Universal Health Care Like many college students I have to pinch pennies to make it through school. Every last penny counts when budgeting my monetary supply. As a result of this I have found that I do not have enough to spare to pay for health insurance. Unlike most college students I am over the age of 23 and thus not covered by my parents insurance. Since I am only employed part time I am also not able to obtain it from work. This puts me in the company of the more than 42 million Americans who do not have health insurance. It is past time that the United States join the rest of the industrialized countries that have already decided to provide their citizens with health care. I believe a single payer health care system is necessary. A national health care system would provide a number of benefits. To begin with, it would cut the overall costs of health care. Secondly it would actually decrease bureaucracy by removing the many layers of insurance paper work patients and physicians are forced to go throu gh in our current system. Finally it would increase life expectancy by allowing more money conscious Americans to receive adequate prevention instead of waiting until an illness becomes worse. All of these reasons point towards a national health care program as being the solution we need. Some opponents of single payer sytems, mostly financed by insurance companies that stand to lose billions from such a plan, point to some of the other countries that have enacted such plans as an advisory against our following suit. However they fail to take into account some of the methods unique to those countries and overstate some of the problems while ignoring our own. Single payer health programs are set up so that all... ... that we, as a nation that considers ourselves civilized can make to ensure the health and safety of our populace. Works Cited Canham-Clyne, John, Woolhandler, Steffie, and Himmelstein, David. The Rational Option. For A National Health Program. Stony Creek, Connecticut: The Pamphleteers Press, 1995 Fisk, Milton. Toward a Healthy Society The Morality and Politics of American Health Care Reform. Lawrence Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2000 Kuttner, Robert. ?The Efficiency of Universal Health Care.? Boston Globe. 12 February 2000. http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/044/oped/The_efficiency_of_ universal_health_careP.shtml Sheils, John F. and Haught, Randall A. Analysis of the Costs and Impact of Universal Health Care Models for the State of Maryland: The Single-Payer and Multi-Payer Models. 2 May 2000. http://www.healthcareforall.com/summary.html