brianna

there are obvious societal benefits to providing health care to all:

1. contagious disease would be better controlled. -- if more people get treatment for a disease less people will be able to contract it. (obvious example: polio would never have been eradicated if we did not provide children with FREE access to the vaccine, i think we're ALL (even the rich) better off without polio).

2. people would be able to use their resources to pursue avenues other than health care, if someone must devote all of their money and energy to a basic need (such as health) they are not available to the work force or to the consumer marketplace.

3. better access to emergency care for ALL. Right now emergency rooms are overcrowded partially because the uninsured have no other option for care. You cannot get a doctor's appointment without insurance, however you CAN walk into the emergency room. Thus emergency rooms throughout the country are bogged down treating people with non emergency medical needs. Since emergency rooms treat patients on a first come first serve basis (with the exception of obvious need -- if an ambulance arrives with several patients with life threatening injuries they will bumped to the front of the line) the insured person with a broken arm will be forced to wait until the uninsured patient with a slight case of strep throat is done seeing the doctor. If through a state sponsored healthcare program uninsured individuals were given an option for medical care outside of the emergency room everyone would benefit from faster access to care.

4. moral -- i don't think anyone here wants to see people die unnecessarily or even be unluckily saddled with enormous debt. I see no way around this if we continue to deny health care to large portion of the population.


I wonder what those of you arguing against state sponsored health care would suggest as an alternative. it's a fact that a large (and growing) percentage of the US population is without health insurance ("According to figures released in September 2003, almost 44 million people—15.2 percent of the total U.S. population—were uninsured in 2002" -- http://covertheuninsuredweek.org/fac...actSheetID=101) and that without health insurance health care is often economically unreachable. this is an even greater (and i would argue more difficult to defend from a moral stand point) problem in the case of children ("Nearly twenty percent of uninsured Americans – 8.5 million individuals – are children." -- http://covertheuninsuredweek.org/fac...actSheetID=103). so what is your answer to this problem?

the system we have right now makes health care available only to those of us lucky enough to be working for companies that voluntarily (usually, though there are some laws that mandate health benefits) provide health insurance or those wealthy enough to pay for it on their own. should this system be kept in tact? if so, should companies be mandated to provide benefits to all? I find it hard to believe that your answer to the health care crisis in this country is to continue to allow the uninsured to suffer without health care indefinitely.