First, let's look at the facts:
-Nearly 50 million Americans do not have health insurance, while another 25 million are underinsured.
-The amount people pay for health insurance increased 30 percent from 2001 to 2005, while income for the same period of time only increased 3 percent, as reported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
-Healthcare expenditures in the United States exceed $2 trillion a year. In comparison, the federal budget is $3 trillion a year.
Due to this inadequate system, President Obama is proposing a public/universal system where the government will subsidize healthcare. While many people argue that since the US is the only industrialized nation without some sort of universal healthcare system, creating one will give more people access to affordable healthcare.
"Duh. Tell me something I didn't already know," you may say.
Well, here's how my father looks at that proposal. A general agent for big-name insurance carriers, my father's worst enemy is public healthcare. He uses the analogy of the hardware store "wipe-out." A decade ago you had many mom-and-pop hardware businesses all over the nation. Then, a few huge corporations came into town and monopolized the market. How? They were able to access hardware products at a cheaper price and thus sell them cheaper to consumers, gaining optimal profit. According to my father, a similar situation would occur if the U.S. resorted to having both private and public healthcare. Insurance carriers would never survive in competition with the government, thus inhibiting them and many physicians from staying in business. (There are over 50,000 people employed in the healthcare industry in Ohio alone!) My father proposes giving everyone a "ticket" to purchases minimal health insurance. This would require the insurance companies to accept high-risk applicants (ie., cancer patients) at a much lower rate.
There are many, many other factors involved and issues to be considered, but the question remains: can we have both private and public healthcare?
