Although universal healthcare seems ideal it comes with consequences especially in the
United States. Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP program are regulated through the
government however individuals must meet certain requirements to receive these kinds of
benefits. For Medicare the patient must be 65 or older and have worked and paid
Medicare taxes for 10 years and the patients that are under 65 usually qualify for Medicare
because they have a known disability. Receiving Medicaid , the patient is usually low
income that covers pregnant women, children and individuals who receive supplemental
social security. The children’s health program is for children 18 or younger and do not
qualify for Medicaid. These programs are easy to regulate because most people don’t ever
qualify for the programs or they don’t reach the age limit, especially with Medicare.
Universal health care is controversial because it is hard for the government to relate, and it
would cause issues when the patients want to receive care in a timely manner. According
to Gabriel Zieff, Zachary Y. Kerr, Justin B. Moore, and Lee Stoner , a a a a a
a one proposal for universal healthcare recently pushed included options such as a
7.5% payroll tax plus a 4% income tax on all Americans, with higher-income citizens
subjected to higher taxes . However, outside projections suggest that these tax proposals
would not be sufficient to fund this plan. In terms of the national economic toll, cost
estimations of this proposal range from USD 32 to 44 trillion across 10 years, while deficit
estimations range from USD 1.1 to 2.1 trillion per year(Zieff, Kerr, Moore, stoner,2020).
Universal health care would cost the united tons of money and continue to put the country
in debt. Master class staff stated In some countries with universal health care, patients see
long wait times or even have to wait months to be seen at all. Governments focus on
providing essential and lifesaving health care and may neglect to cover rare diseases or
elective procedures. With universal health care it is possible that the patients will see a
decrease in quality of care because hospitals, medical offices, and urgent are seeing triple
the patients and to see them all in a day they are doing the bare minimum care to be able to
go see the next patient. Overall universal healthcare can be beneficial but the government
would have to find a way not to tax the patients so much in taxes and cause the
government to go in financial debt trying to offer free healthcare to everyone.
References
Master class .What is Universal Health Care? definition, Pros, and cons - 2019.
MasterClass. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2022, from
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-universal-health-care#what-is-universal-
health-care
Zieff, G., Kerr, Z. Y., Moore, J. B., & Stoner, L. (2020). Universal Healthcare in the United
States of America: A Healthy Debate. Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania), 56(11), 580.
https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina56110580
