In recent years improving health care coverage has been a rather hot topic among Americans. According to information on KFF.org, between the years 2000 and 2010 the amount of uninsured Americans increased due to decreasing employer sponsored health insurance and the rising cost of health care coverage. The number of uninsured accelerated during the recession when many lost their job.
Many Americans unnecessarily die and suffer each year simply due to the fact they don’t have healthcare coverage. Dwelling in a nation where essentially, in a broad sense one’s wealth determines whether or not one may simply survive greatly challenges morals and ethics. An article on nesri.org states that the United States has a higher infant mortality rate and a lower life expectancy than comparable countries. These two facts give doubt to fairness in the United State’s healthcare system as well.
“Without healthcare insurance I feel insecure,” says Revelan May, an uninsured American. “I feel it’s a necessity that everyone should have access to.” In addition, the idea of health care being a necessity and free seems to be a rather common belief among American citizens.
“I think healthcare should be paid for by the government, I think it is something people should get,” says Misses Reilley, a satisfied insured high school teacher and American citizen.
Many countries, such as France and Canada, have what could arguably be deemed free health care systems where all citizens have health care coverage. Both France and Canada have lower infant mortality rates than the United States according to the Data World Bank. Both countries have a higher life expectancy as well.
According to an article on NPR.org entitled France’s Model Health Care For New Mother, a woman named Mary Lou Sarazin had a better experience and was more satisfied with France’s health care system while pregnant. She had a pregnancy in New York and had not obtained the same degree of satisfaction as in the article she stated, “I just felt like when I was in New York, it was always stress, stress, stress, I just didn’t like the care I was receiving.”
However, such satisfaction may have resulted not from the health care system alone, but from the kind nature of the individuals as well. In the United States many often frown upon paying taxes for health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid that basically provide free health care for those who simply can’t afford coverage on their own, as they are often assumed to be taking advantage of such programs. In contrast to this view, more than half of Medicaid recipients, 61%, already have a job, according to an article on blogs.wsj.com entitled Get a Job? Most Welfare Recipients Already Have One. The United States unfortunately seems to be a nation that has difficulty working together and supporting one another, this may simply be the result of American nature rather than human nature.
With around 45,000 deaths of individuals each year due purely to their inability to obtain proper health care services, the United States is blindly digging itself into a bad place. The United States claims to be “A nation with freedom, liberty, and justice for all.” However, a nation may not honestly claim to be free and represent justice so boldly when its citizens acquaint death simply because they are rejected health care due to their low economic status and when they are enclosed by a constant feeling of insecurity as they don’t feel their country will take care of them if they were to fall ill or were to become severely injured.
Some Canadians are considering the establishment of a privatized health care system like the in the United States as they feel the system will be more efficient this way, but their health care systems still are inclusive of all citizens and create a more healthy civilization overall. They provide a greater degree of security for their people and in many ways are more acceptable in moral and ethical terms.
The United States may currently indeed be a world superpower and a very influential nation as well as a widespread role model. Though, despite all this glorification, its surface perception is a bit deceptive and the overall actions of its citizens tend to contradict the basic foundation and principles which it was built upon. Within a country where individuals to some extent refuse to care for one another, advancement in the common sense can only occur so much. If individuals are not healthy and are not cared for, they can’t run a country, it just is not possible, eventually, after being robbed of so many potentially exceptional people, a nation will fade.
