In my last journal, a topic was brought up advocating for a free market healthcare system, under the assumption that we'd have better care with competition, supply and demand, without government tampering.. um... yeah okay maybe universal healthcare in other countries has some problems and horror stories associated with it, but the moment you tell me that we should instead have a truly free market system, you've lost me. I know it doesn't work because I've seen it not work, especially with the most lax regulation you're probably going to find anywhere else in this country. However, I'd still like to address that idea with a little of my own experience and analysis.
Obviously I'm no expert, and when it comes to how we can implement a better healthcare system, there are a lot of hypotheticals involved, although aside from second and third world countries, the only real examples of working healthcare systems we can look to for comparison are.. well, single-payer systems, because we're the only country in the "first-world" classification that doesn't have it. I'm sure there are horror stories people can point to and claim it doesn't work, but how many of us here in the US already have horror stories to tell that have affected us personally? The biggest difference is that the majority of those horror stories involve people who can't pay for basic healthcare.
"I shouldn't have to pay for someone else's healthcare"
Okay, even though I completely disagree with that, I still kinda get it, but if you've ever had a job, you already did pay for other people's health care, even before Obamacare. It's called Medicare. You already pay for it, even though you don't benefit from it now. Also, if you have insurance, you are paying for someone else's healthcare, and if you happen to need treatment, they're paying for yours, that's how insurance works. The healthy essentially pay the bills for the sick, only it's expensive and not everyone can afford it. If everyone pays a little more into Medicare, and it covers everyone.. well, I know there are still a lot of hypotheticals with that situation, and even experts disagree on specifics, so let's try a different context, one that we all know a little something about..
Where I live, there are no busses, no trains, no subways, no rails of any kind except for transport of materials and goods.. you can't even get a taxi to come out here. We don't have public transport of any kind for miles in any direction, but you know what we do have? School busses.
No matter what backwoods road you live down in my area, if you're going to school, you can always catch a ride on a school bus, and you can go to school and get a basic education. If you're poor, you can hop a bus for free and ride to school, and get a basic education. You think the bus drivers are going to turn around and kick poor students off the bus? You think the public education system, for all its flaws, will turn away a kid for a basic education because their family is poor? (Maybe they'll refuse to give the kid any food while they're there but that's another issue)
Does the public education system have flaws? Absolutely. Are there horror stories to tell about how kids are treated in public schools? Damn right there are. Now imagine someone says to you that because of these problems, we should do away with public schools and let the free market handle it. How would that sound to you? Think we'd still have school busses picking up students from every backwoods road? Think the poor families would be able to put their kids on a bus and send them to get a basic education if we had nothing but for-profit schools? Sure we might have some non-profit education systems popping up here and there, but how many kids suddenly unable to afford to go to a for-profit school would they be able to educate, really? We'd be back in a situation where not everyone can afford to learn to read, then we'd have to find some way of addressing the literacy issue. You think our math scores are bad now, imagine how much worse they would be when only those that can afford it can learn basic math.
Yes, many schools are under-staffed, and teachers are paid shit, but we can, and should, address those problems instead of giving huge tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy. You can't just toss education to the free market and expect everything to be fine. I mean sure, maybe private schools can afford to pay their teachers more, but so can our current public education system if we actually.. you know.. do something about it. It's a problem we can address without just doing away with public education and saying "here, corporations, have at it."
So.. that being said.. despite the problems with our public education system, if we can willingly pay taxes to teach every kid in this country to read, why then can't we also pay taxes to allow them to see a fucking doctor?
