For years, Great Britain and the rest of Europe have been running their governments in a way that is more beneficial to their populaces than the system the United States has had in place for decades. It is the governments obligation to provide for its populous the most necessary functions. Among those functions is healthcare. Most of the modern world has seen the validity of this argument and currently has a universal system of healthcare in place so that no individual is left without healthcare; healthcare in the modern age is 100% necessary for everyone.
That which act.theteaparty.net calls a “government takeover of healthcare” which “takes funding from Medicare, increases taxes, and contains an unconstitutional individual mandate that requires every American to purchase insurance,” is nothing of the sort; those who oppose the passing of the Affordable Care Act are attempting to deny individuals their right to healthcare. They strongly oppose the passing of the law although it is the only logical system to ensure a fair system of healthcare. With the passing of the Affordable Care Act the United States made its greatest leap in social equality since the days of the new deal. What Marco Rubio calls a system “snowballing into a full scale disaster” is instead a social equalizer and tool the nation can use to secure lasting care for those who have previously been denied healthcare due to preexisting conditions or who have simply been unable to afford the prices that abusive corporations have placed on those services necessary to survival.
In reality, the Affordable Care Act, or ACA as it is frequently referred to as, is not the most perfect system for providing healthcare as it still relies upon individual corporations for the sale of health insurance instead of a single body such as the government to have total control over the sale, distribution, and management of healthcare. However, those who oppose the passing of this marvelous law calling it an infringement of rights and unconstitutional are simply uninformed and don’t understand the full implications of the law and its details. For example, Marco Rubio wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:
When ObamaCare was debated and passed in 2009 and 2010, none of its proponents, including the president, told the American people that the law granted the federal government the authority to bail out insurance companies at the expense of taxpayers. But now their dirty little secret is out, and it should be wiped out from the law.
Such talk is unconducive and reflects the desire of many misinformed individuals to remove a law which they have never taken the time to fully appreciate; an example of the misinformed group of individuals is evidenced by the statement made by Senator Marco Rubio. The “dirty little secret” he mentions is in fact a safeguard for the consumer, protecting the consumer from market collapses and unfortunate events which might cause an insurance company to fail. Were a corporation such as AARP to fail, millions of individuals relying on insurance from the corporation would lose their coverage in what could only be considered a total catastrophe. This portion of the law, allowing the government to intervene and protect a failing corporation, is simply a measure taken by the government to make absolutely certain that, should a major corporation crash, the burden would not fall on the average consumer leaving them without insurance in a world where insurance is the new automobile, everyone must have one to function well in a first world society.
The benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the US are so numerous and evident that it is indeed rather surprising that so many people still oppose the system. For one, it removes all discriminatory procedures that were adopted by insurance agencies in the past; no longer are people discriminated against by virtue of their preexisting conditions. Also, the Act strengthens coverage for those people on medicare, a social system of healthcare which has been in place and loved since its beginnings in 1966. Insurers cannot drop coverage if one becomes disabled or ill; in the past it was a well known issue that many people lost coverage after becoming disabled or chronically ill. It is highly beneficial to have a provision that allows adult children to stay on their parents’ plans until the age of 26, especially in a nation where, according to The Atlantic, 53% of recent college graduates are unemployed. Now, under the ACA, many insurance companies are providing preventative services such as mammograms at no out of pocket cost. It is most obvious that the Affordable Care Act is one of the most revolutionary pieces of equalizing legislation in the US since the days of the suffrage movement; with the ACA the US is one step closer to total equality.
UPI commenter Peter Morici wrote naively in an article titled Obamacare: Arrogance, Corruption and Abuse that “The rich will keep their doctors, while the rest scramble and often go without prompt attention to emerging illnesses or any attention at all.” This, however, is also untrue. The common misconception about universal systems of healthcare is that they take ages to get treatment to those in dire need. However, this is a baseless claim. If a patient is in a life or death situation and needs an MRI after a severe accident, for example, they can go to the hospital and get one that day. They don’t have to wait the frequently believed four months for treatment during which they could have met a premature end. Also, by definition, it is the Affordable Care Act; it is designed so that those who are able to pay higher premiums will have slightly higher premiums and those who are unable to pay for these higher premiums will have lower premiums. Everyone will thus be able to afford healthcare.
People in Canada love their healthcare system. People in Finland love their healthcare system. People in the United Kingdom love their healthcare system. In fact, every developed nation with a government provided healthcare system has a majority of citizens who love the social system of healthcare. For them, it works now, it has worked in the past, and it will continue to work. It is only fear that compels Americans to believe that a more universal healthcare system is a bad thing for the nation as a whole. It is a new and foreign system to most Americans. Before the populous gets used to the idea it will receive a constant flow of some level of opposition; when, however, the populous has finally grown accustomed to the new system, they will see that the new system’s advantages far outweigh its costs and the benefits exceed the benefits of the old system.
Peter Morici seems to also believe that the new system is a “classic prescription for monopoly profits at health insurance companies and outlandish executive bonuses.” This is, however, also incorrect, as evidenced by the plethora of insurance providers still in business. The system under the ACA does not rely solely on one monopolistic firm, but rather on a network of firms that operate under specified guidelines and are, therefore, in constant competition with each other, keeping monopolistic theories out of the range of probability. Morici also believes that “Simultaneously, the ACA made illegal many perfectly adequate private and employer-based policies and required insurance companies to offer one-size-fits-all alternatives in each county across the country.” After countless hours of research and studies, the specifications of what were necessary and thus mandatory within plans were decided upon and written into law. This meant that the aforementioned employer-based policies which were considered by some to be “perfectly adequate,” did not provide the necessary aspects of insurance that everyone must have. Thus, the plans could not have been “perfectly adequate” in the first place. On top of that, although many companies have implemented one-size-fits-all alternatives that meet only the minimal requirements set forth in the ACA, there is still leniency when it comes to more insurance than what the minimal requirements specify. In short, there are numerous other options to the standard option.
Having fallen drastically behind the rest of the world in the area of healthcare, the United States is finally beginning to set itself along the proper path. Healthcare is nothing bad, as some people would like others to believe. In fact, a universal system of healthcare is the most socioeconomically fair system of ensuring that everyone have access to the necessary systems and treatment options to grow a healthy populous. It is the governments duty to protect its citizens from injustice and harm. There is nothing just about people being denied health insurance due to preexisting conditions or a lack of finances. The government of the United States of America has finally reached a point where it can begin to expand its social systems to foster a more accepting, healthy, and respectable nation. The first step on that road to social equality is accepting that universal healthcare is morally justified and total necessary.