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Resolved, that the federal government provide free healthcare to lower income families. A lack of adequate healthcare has always been a major problem for lower income American families. Unless provided with it from your employer, private healthcare is a large economic essential burden that many lower income families cannot afford. Thus, providing free healthcare for these families is a good idea in theory, but is feasible? First of all, someone has to pay the healthcare companies, so if not these families, then who? In addition, will higher income families be taxed more to cover the cost of providing healthcare for lower income families? And where does the government draw the line between a low-income family and a middle-income family? Will a difference as small as $1000 a year determine whether a family qualifies for free healthcare? Although there seem to be many problems with this resolution, the biggest problem is that these low-income families cannot afford healthcare, and they are suffering because of it. Something needs to be done to help them, but is free healthcare the best answer?
Pro Arguments: - Data from the 1970s and 1980s showed that poor and inadequately insured children and families experienced a greater burden out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures. Since then, Medicaid expansions and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) have improved access and utilization for low-income women and children. While it has been documented that insurance coverage improves access and use for low-income children and adults, it is not clear whether insurance coverage has the presumed effect of reducing the financial burden of OOP health care expenditures. Medicaid expansions for children appear to have reduced the financial burden for families of Medicaid-eligible children. However, these children still had greater financial-burden than higher-income children, and more than 1/5 of their families paid more than 10% of their family income for their child's health care expenditures. Other data from the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) showed that poor families appeared to be less likely to be protected from catastrophic health care expenditures compared with higher income families, regardless of the type of insurance. It is important to consider the financial burden felt by the whole family, and could affect the decision to seek and pay for care for other family members (www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4149/is_6_40/ai_n16015023
- Health care coverage can be critical in helping people make the transition from welfare to work and keeping them healthy so that they can work. This is especially important in entry-level jobs that may not provide employer-based health insurance (www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t000516b.html)
Con Arguments: - A single-payer national health care system would come at enormous cost to American taxpayers. For example, Russo- Wellstone would require employers and the self-employed to pay a tax equal to 7.5 percent of wages. The top individual tax rate would rise from 31 to 38 percent. Corporate income taxes would increase from 34 to 38 percent. Social Security benefits would be taxed at 85 percent rather than the current 50 percent. And the elderly would be assessed a $55 per month fee for long-term care. (2) Even those levies may not be enough to pay for national health care. Some economists put the cost as high as $339 billion per year in additional taxes. (3)
- For all that tax money, we would buy surprisingly little health care. The one common characteristic of all national health care systems is a shortage of services. For example, in Great Britain, a country with a population of only 55 million, more than 800,000 patients are waiting for surgery. (4) In New Zealand, a country with a population of just 3 million, the surgery waiting list now exceeds 50,000. (5) In Sweden the wait for heart x-rays is more than 11 months. Heart surgery can take an additional 8 months. (6) In Canada the wait for hip replacement surgery is nearly 10 months; for a mammogram, 2.5 months; for a pap smear, 5 months. (7) Surgeons in Canada report that, for heart patients, the danger of dying on the waiting list now exceeds the danger of dying on the operating table. (According to Alice Baumgart, president of the Canadian Nurses Association, emergency rooms are so overcrowded that patients awaiting treatment frequently line the corridors. (9) Table 1 gives the average wait for various types of physicians' services in five Canadian provinces. (www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa184.html)
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