What’s with the Healthcare Hubbub?

Healthcare in America? Here are the options.

Sachin’s Perspective:

Let’s say you want to buy a house. Well, having several options to choose from would be great. But when you’re having a stroke, you don’t care about choices and the free market! You just need the situation fixed. Healthcare isn’t like a business. It’s a right. Our well-being shouldn’t be a billion dollar private industry where companies can make trillions off our bodies. It’s time to implement universal healthcare.

Does that phrase scare you? I’ll be honest. It used to scare me. I would think to myself, ‘Oh, we can’t become like Europe. Where will the money come from? And more government bureaucracy, get outta here!’ But if you take the time to look at the facts, it becomes much more palatable. While the U.S. spent $3.2 trillion on healthcare in 2015, the UK spent a mere $131 billion on a system where all citizens are insured. Accounting for population differences, the U.S. would’ve spent 640 billion dollars to provide healthcare for UK’s population. As a result, the U.S. spends 5 times as much on healthcare with often mediocre results. The Harvard Health Publications asserts that the U.S. continues to “perform poorly on a variety of health outcomes” and has a lower life expectancy than comparable countries, despite the extravagant spending. While the Affordable Care act has made gains in expanding coverage, premiums are still on the rise and 30 million Americans remain uninsured. Our current healthcare system simply isn’t working.

Now that we’ve established that the current system isn’t working, let’s look at how a single payer healthcare system would be better for all Americans. In a single payer system, a public organization is responsible for funding healthcare for its citizens. Everyone can access essential health services under one health insurance plan. American citizens would still be able to pick where they receive their care just like medicare-which is why it’s often called “Medicare-for-all.” As seen in other developed countries, wasteful spending could be contained through “cost control and lower administrative costs.” Instead of multiple competing organizations, there would be one organization-eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy. More importantly, in an era of polar inequality, universal healthcare would bridge the gap between the very rich and the very poor, ensuring that all Americans have access to quality healthcare.

While there can be longer wait times and limited availability for services like cosmetic procedures, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. No healthcare system is perfect, but one that ensures that all Americans have access to high-quality healthcare is the best option. One that leaves 30 million hard-working Americans out of the picture isn’t.  

It’s important to understand that buying a house is a business. Your health isn’t, so don’t treat it like one.

Chance’s Perspective:

While it would certainly be nice if everyone had access to healthcare, I don’t believe that a single payer system is the answer.  If you’re worried about the overwhelming 29 million US residents currently uninsured, acknowledge that ⅔ of that group are either eligible for government financial assistance but haven’t taken advantage of it or are illegal immigrants. If someone is having a stroke in front of a hospital, they should obviously receive immediate care. Likewise, doctors shouldn’t be forced to provide free total body MRIs just because someone may feel like they’re patient zero to a new deadly pathogen. The solution lies somewhere in the middle. My position falls on the belief that there needs to be a sense of personal responsibility in health care, and that socialized medicine will not achieve this.  

Now, concerning the claim that government provided healthcare works in other countries, that depends on what you consider working. Access to government sponsored healthcare often means only access to a waiting list. According to BBC news in 2011, there were 118,007 people who had to wait longer than six months for England’s National Health Services. Imagine a woman finding a breast lump, having to wait weeks for evaluation, and then even longer for treatment. In the United States, we’ve come to expect not only rapid treatment, but state-of-the-art treatment. Sachin may be right that our overall life expectancy is shorter in the US than other developed countries, but there are other measures of success in healthcare.  For instance, when you look at cancer survival rates after diagnosis, the US consistently out-performs all European countries in all types of cancer by a fairly wide margin.  

Part of the reason we do so well is due to our excellence among highly trained doctors. In a single payer system, where doctors of the same department get paid similarly, there’s a lack of competitive drive, so you’ve got the hardest working, most driven doctors exiting the UK like never before to countries where they will be compensated for their value. Meanwhile, the UK is leading the European Union in hiring foreign doctors, currently more than a third of all doctors, according to The Telegraph. Suddenly our 2343% increase in healthcare cost in comparison with the UK – which equates to 227% per capita – is easier to justify.  

The solution lies not in transferring to a single payer system, but in rigorous healthcare and tort reform. I agree with Sachin that we should eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, but putting the government in charge will only increase it. Currently it costs $4-11 billion to approve a new medical technology by the FDA. If that governmental barrier is reduced, more effective medications can make it to the market faster and cheaper. If there was significant tort reform, doctors wouldn’t have to practice defensive medicine, ordering expensive tests just to prevent a lawsuit. This is currently responsible for more than $50 billion of our nation’s healthcare costs.  

Finally, I need to get back to the idea of personal responsibility. Everyone paying for one another in a socialized medicine system will only decrease the stake an individual has in maintaining their own health. If people do a better job of taking responsibility through eating right, exercising, and not partaking in dangerous and harmful substances, healthcare spending could decrease 14%. And with a healthier patient population, we can expect better healthcare outcomes and longer life expectancies.

Sachin’s Rebuttal:

While it may be true that the majority of uninsured Americans have access to government funding or are unauthorized immigrants, many of these Americans simply can’t have health insurance because Republican politicians in their state refuse to expand Medicaid in their district. For example, a study conducted by the New York Times found that over 3 million hard-working Americans across 19 states still don’t have access to insurance since they don’t qualify for government aid but can’t afford health insurance. The current healthcare system might be competitive and capitalistic, as Chance suggested, but it really sucks for many hardworking families in this country.

Chance also mentioned that doctors would have to give out more free-body MRI’s. Under the current system, as Ted Cruz mentioned in the healthcare debate, doctors give out more MRI’s and CT Scans than universal healthcare nations due to pressure from insurance companies. If we implemented universal healthcare, doctors wouldn’t have to give out more MRI’s and CT Scans, as evidenced by the practices of other nations.

The claim that a breast-cancer patient would be put on a waiting list in the UK simply is an exaggeration. The study Chance used clearly explains that the nearly all UK citizens on the waiting list are waiting for knee and hip replacements. The New York Times explains that the UK “stipulates a standard that patients should wait in an emergency room no more than four hours if they are to be admitted to a hospital.” The United States has no such standard. It is quite easy to get lucrative procedures done rapidly (knee-replacement, botox injection) in the U.S., but it could take weeks for an asthmatic whose breathing is quickly deteriorating to get an appointment-more “if you need to find a doctor who accepts your insurance plan or Medicare.” While the rich once again have a plethora of resources at their disposal, needy Americans who need quick treatment aren’t getting it.

With universal health care, we can decrease overall wait times. We don’t need to look at the U.K. to begin. Take a look at the Netherlands where only 14% of adults had to wait 6 or more days for a doctor’s appointment compared to 26% of adults in the U.S.

Lastly, the competitive spirit of America will never be lost. Universal health care would create a streamlined system where doctors would have more time to see patients. Doctors who do a great job with their patients, and see more as a result, will make more money than those who don’t. In addition, doctors currently caring for uninsured patients would see their incomes rise as the insurance money pops in. With the majority of American physicians supporting universal health care, including my parents, it’s clearly time to implement it.

I firmly believe that healthcare is a right. Our time on Earth is short, and we need to make the most of it. Universal healthcare allows us to do just that.

Common Ground: Chance and Sachin

We both understand that our current healthcare system needs reform. The Affordable Care Act has expanded insurance accessibility for Americans, but it hasn’t completely fixed the problem.  The new administration is working to refine the Act, and we both hope that a bipartisan agreement for the health and welfare of all Americans is achieved.