Health Care: Comprehensive vs. Incremental Health Care Reform.

Those who are pushing for universal health care believe that everyone should have equal access to medical care regardless of age, health condition, or income level. By implementing universal health care, advocates say that the government could be the single controller, the single purchaser, acting on behalf of all (also known as a government-sponsored medical program). On the flip side, those who oppose universal health care (mostly Conservatives) think that way not because they wish to deprive anyone of medical care, they say, but because a government-controlled system would weaken the people's power over the insurance companies. According to them a weakened body of citizens would cause the companies to raise prices; without people in charge of their own research on which company is best, the insurance agencies have no motive to reduce prices, trying to gain customers. Because of all this taxes would skyrocket. Conservatives believe that enhancing tax-free Health Savings Accounts and offering tax deductions for people who buy their own health insurance are potential solutions to the problem.



It is my opinion that health care reform is a necessity. But the way to go about this is not through universal health care. As Conservatives have outlined, taxes would increase, not everyone would receive health care anyway, and companies would feel free to charge any price. Thus it becomes a cyclical problem: Insurance companies continue to raise prices because government is paying for health insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid; the government is forced to raise taxes to cover costs; the people pay the higher taxes; and the insurance companies, realizing that the people were willing to pay the higher costs, raise their prices again. Because people aren't shopping around for their own deals but rather letting someone else pay for it, they are blind to how much the insurance companies are charging. A second issue with universal health care is that the people who are already paying for their own health care have the added burden of paying taxes on another person's health insurance. There are many cases where the people who don't have health insurance lack it because of choice, not necessity. Or they are unemployed and perhaps not even looking for a job but still have the audacity to demand that someone else pay their hospital bills. JB Williams, a journalist for Conservative Truth.org, says that this so called reform for privatized health care is more like the wiping out of privatized health care.