Medicare for All Argumentative Essay

Introduction

For many years, the government through different interventions and policies, have made health care more expensive than it should be for ordinary citizens. These government interventions such as Medicaid and EMTALA have managed to drive up health care costs to an extreme point where even under the current Affordable Care Act, individuals cannot afford basic coverage and are in dire need of universal healthcare system. In this system, the federal government provides quality medical services to all the citizens irrespective of their race, gender or the ability to pay. This kind of healthcare is often funded by the general income taxes from the citizens or the payroll taxes, making healthcare mostly an expense for the government. Healthcare comes first, and when governments take responsibility for their citizens' health, they work to ensure that medical institutions and healthcare professionals provide quality care for all at the best cost.

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According to (Collins et al.), universal health care can significantly lower both public and private health care costs, therefore, reducing the health care cost for the economy. Since universal healthcare places medical expenses soles on the government, it can regulate the cost of medical services by lowering the administrative costs and costs arising from drug prescriptions. Similarly, through controls and negotiations, the government can eliminate the cost of having to deal with numerous private health insurance providers which often increases the final cost of medicine and medical services. In this case, medical professionals are forced to deal with a single government institution thereby lowering the healthcare cost of the economy.

Universal healthcare forces medical institutions and healthcare professionals to offer the same standard of medical service for all and at a lower cost. Weisfeld (275) states that the cost of healthcare is the number one financial problem in the United States where medical institutions offer expensive services to cater for the doctors' expensive salaries and to focus more on emerging technology in medicine. Government through universal health care, however, reduces competition among medical providers and therefore, creating a healthier workforce where an individual's health is more crucial than emerging technologies. Particularly, with reduced competition among medical providers, doctors are forced to offer the same service for all at a lower cost.

Providing universal healthcare means providing all citizens the right to healthcare; which might be good for economic productivity. When people live healthy without having to worry about healthcare, they contribute more to the economy through increased working time and reduced leave of absence. According to a recent report on the US economy, the government loses as much as $120 billion annually due to reduced work productivity brought by health issues (Jacobs et al. 127 ). If these people are given access to healthcare, the number of job absentee can significantly diminish, therefore reducing annual economic loss.

Specific counterarguments to universal healthcare are crucial but do not compare to the importance of government involvement in healthcare. One such counterargument is that providing the right to health care has the potential of increasing both the payroll and general income taxes since the cost of coverage of the medical for all is often paid through higher taxes. However, with proper elimination of administrative costs, prescription drug costs and the costs of dealing with different insurance providers, health care costs can be lowered significantly and ultimately reducing overall taxes.Ideally, government intervention through universal healthcare ensures equity in medical services at a reduced cost. The government through regulation and negotiations can impose restrictions in the form of taxes to guide its citizens and medical institutions towards a healthy nation. Despite several counterarguments to government intervention, healthcare comes first, and with proper guidelines, the government can enable access to cheap healthcare for all.

Work Cited

Collins, Sara R., et al. "The rise in health care coverage and affordability since health reform took effect." New York: The Commonwealth Fund (2015).

Jacobs, Lawrence, and Theda Skocpol. Health care reform and American politics: What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Weisfeld, Victoria D. Jonas and kovner's health care delivery in the united states. Springer Publishing Company, 2011.