"I mean, people have access to health care in America," he said. "After all, you just go to an emergency room." - Former President George Bush
Unlike Bush, I believe that
there needs to be health care reform in the United States. Not all American's
have access to health care and the argument of "no one will be turned down
at an emergency room" doesn't work. Hopefully someday it will be a universal
understanding that it's crucial to treat medical problems before they become
deadly enough to constitute as an "emergency situation."
What I don't agree is the
institution of universal healthcare where everyone receives the same
treatment, regardless of their ability to pay. Instead, I'm an advocate of
everyone having basic healthcare, but if you can pay for the best treatment,
you should get the best treatment. In this way, we are morally human by caring
for our fellow man, but we also intelligently human by allowing competition to
advance society and medicine.
The World Health Organization ranks the
United States as #37 for overall health care which is largely based on
fairness, distribution, and equality. In other words, the United States falls
behind on the rankings because there is no universal coverage. According
to T.R. Reid, author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and
Fairer Health Care, the United States has the best health care system for
those who can afford it. For
this reason, the WHO ranked the US as #1 for "responsiveness to the needs
and choices of the individual patient." If you have the cash to be that
patient, then you will receive the best health care in the world.
As you may know, the best doctors, equipment,
procedures, and drugs will produce the most optimal results, but they are also
the most expensive. While it would be ideal to provide these top-of-the-line
services to each American, it is not financially possible. In order to
equalize medicine, we would be forced to severely limit the choices of millions
of Americans to a basic healthcare package in order to keep health care costs
low.
If we
chose an alternative route, such as limiting the paychecks of doctors,
hospitals, and drug companies, then we would be ridding our health care system
of competition. Competition is the reason for American innovation. Data
assembled by Dr. Ronald Wenger indicates that 80% of the top medical advances
in the past 20 years have come from the United States. Also, 8 out of the 10
best selling drugs in the world have come from the United States. The U.S. has
some of the highest colon, breast, and prostate cancer survival rates in the
world. We also rank 1st or second in the world in liver transplants, heart
transplants, total knee replacements, kidney transplants, and coronary artery
bypass. In addition, we have the shortest
waiting time for nonemergency surgeries. This information can lead me to assume
that the smartest, most capable people in our country have all the incentive in
the world to enter the medical field and get to work.
In
summary, the United States has the best health care, but not all Americans have
access to it. The question is: how can we keep competition in medicine, but
also provide care for each individual American? For this I have a strong answer
for what not to do, and that is, we cannot equalize
medicine. Most of all, we should take away the incentives for our American doctors, hospitals, and drug companies. Instead, health care
reform needs to provide a basic health care package for those who cannot pay without affecting competition in medicine.
Their choices will be restricted in order to keep costs low, but they will get
the health care they need.
And
finally, the moral question: is it fair that a child born to a rich
family receives more choice in healthcare than a child born to a poor family?
For example, a rich child can fly to a large city and see the best doctor known
in order to treat the common cold (if he really wants to) while a poor child
can only go to his local pediatrician if he begins to have flu-like
symptoms. I believe that all children should have the ability to see a doctor
when they are sick, and I'd wish that for the American health care system. But
I also believe that it's not fair to reduce the choice of care for one
child for the sole purpose of balancing it with the other. Does the poor child
still have a human right to good health care? Undoubtedly, yes.
