Some 47 million Americans, 15.8% of the population, don’t have health insurance.
Most of these people are in jobs that don't offer benefits – working part-time, for small businesses or for themselves. Some are between jobs.
The U.S. government spends nearly $700 billion each year on health care, mainly for Medicare (which covers nearly all older Americans), Medicaid (which helps cover those who are very poor) and care for veterans.
Meanwhile private health care costs amount to about $1.1 trillion every year. About six in ten Americans get health insurance from their employer.
We’ve all heard friends and co-workers say, ‘I can’t afford to get sick.’ For many, this isn’t just about meeting a deadline at work or school. Millions of Americans worry about whether they can pay their medical bills, or whether they can get care at all. Even those with good health insurance worry about the bureaucracy and complexity of the system.
For a long time, the debate was about whether the U.S. health care system needed an overhaul. We've now passed that milestone. Today's debate is about what should be done. The solutions being examined by policymakers, health care industry observers and reformers, and citizens fall loosely into three types of approaches. Which one would be most likely to get your vote?
Use Competition to Make the System More Efficient
Expand the Current System to Cover More People
Create a National Health Care System
The main problem with the health care system is that costs keep going up. All the other problems in the health care system stem from this and won't be solved until we give everyone real choices and the ability to take responsibility for what they spend on care. That means reducing regulation and using free market competition to allow insurers to offer a wider range of plans. We should also embrace managed care, which watches expenses carefully and has already slowed down the rise in health care costs. By moving further in the direction of managed care and adopting medical savings accounts, which encourage individuals to save and shop around for health care, we’ll be able to bring down costs and cover more people. Read More...
We don’t need to rip up the existing health care system and start over. We already have the best, hightech medical centers in the world and insurance programs in place that cover 85 percent of Americans. We can just extend those proven programs, public and private, to cover more people. We can require employers and individuals to have health insurance and offer them financial incentives to make it affordable. The federal government already has effective health programs for the elderly (Medicare), the poor (Medicaid), low-income children (CHIP) and its own employees. If we expand the eligibility for those plans and require employers to offer coverage, we’ll be able to cover more uninsured people with the least disruption to those who already have insurance. Gradually expanding the current system is the most practical way to cover more people without breaking the budget. Read More...
Decent health care ought to be a basic right, not something that depends on the job you hold. Our patchwork health care system of private insurance and government programs simply isn’t working. It’s time to try what Canada and most European countries already have: a national, government- run health care system. The system would work much like Medicare, except that everyone would be entitled to coverage, regardless of age, income or job status. Like Medicare, you’d still pick your own doctor, but the government would get the bill. We’ve debated what to do about health care for years, but nothing else has solved the problem. This is the only way to solve the problem of the uninsured, once and for all. Read More...
