Question

Should the U.S. rely more on government funding for health care for all citizens? What would the advantages and disadvantages be of such a system?  

Answer 1

Pros of Government Healthcare

Iconic American consumer advocate Ralph Nader sums up the positives of government-funded healthcare from the patient's perspective:

• Free choice of doctor and hospital;
• No bills, no co-pays, no deductibles;
• No exclusions for pre-existing conditions; you are insured from the day you are born;
• No bankruptcies due to medical bills;
• No deaths due to lack of health insurance;
• Cheaper. Simpler. More affordable;
• Everybody in. Nobody out;
• Save taxpayers billions a year in bloated corporate administrative and executive compensation costs.

Other important positives of government-funded healthcare include:

• 47 millions Americans lacked healthcare insurance coverage as of the 2008 presidential campaign season. Soaring unemployment since then have caused the the ranks of the uninsured to swell past 50 million in mid-2009.

  Mercifully, government-funded healthcare would provide access to medical services for all uninsured. And lower costs of government healthcare will cause insurance coverage to be significantly more accessible to millions of individuals and businesses.

• Doctors and other medical professionals can focus on patient care, and no longer need to spend hundreds of wasted hours annually dealing with insurance companies.

  Patients, too, under government healthcare would never need to fritter inordinate amounts of frustrating time haggling with insurance companies.

Cons of Government Healthcare

Conservatives and libertarians oppose U.S. government healthcare mainly because they don't believe that it's a proper role of government to provide social services to private citizens.

Instead, conservatives believe that healthcare coverage should continue to be provided solely by private-sector for-profit insurance corporations or possibly by non-profit entities.

In 2009, a handful of Congressional Republicans have suggested that perhaps the uninsured could obtain limited medical services via a voucher system and tax credits for low-income families.

Conservatives also contend that lower-cost government healthcare would impose too great of a competitive advantage against for-profit insurers.

The Wall Street Journal argues, "In reality, equal competition between a public plan and private plans would be impossible. The public plan would inexorably crowd out private plans, leading to a single-payer system."

From the patient's perspective, negatives of government-funded healthcare could include:

• A decrease in flexibility for patients to freely choose from among the vast cornucopia of drugs, treatment options, and surgical procedures offered today by higher-priced doctors and hospitals.
• Existing patient confidentiality standards, which would likely be diluted by centralized government info that would necessarily be maintained.
• Less potential doctors may opt to enter the medical profession due to decreased opportunities for highly compensated positions. Less doctors coupled with skyrocketing demand for doctors could lead to a shortage of medical professionals, and to longer waiting periods for appointments.