National Healthcare System One Issue

¶ … National Healthcare System

One issue that is of great importance in the world today -- and to me personally -- is the need for healthcare reform in the United States. This nation is one of the last in the developed world not to offer some sort of comprehensive health plan to its citizens, despite the fact that it has one of the largest per-capita GDPs in the world and by most measures could easily afford to provide preventative and comprehensive care if its priorities were shifted. Though this might seem like the proper place for yet another diatribe about the United States' military actions in the Middle East (and indeed, the fact that a trillion dollar decade-long domestic health plan is balked at when far more is spent every year on overseas wars is worthy of note), I will refrain in favor of somewhat less politicized lines of reasoning. Namely, I believe for purely logical and pragmatic reasons that health insurance if not care should be federalized, and it should be paid for with higher income taxes.

It would be beyond disingenuous, of course, to pretend that the issue of taxation is not politicized, but it is somewhat more cerebral and less idealistic than the debate over the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- among people on both sides of the argument. There are those that claim it is their right to make as much money as they want without the government interfering punitively in the form of increased taxation; they argue that higher taxes would decrease innovation and production, leading to a general slowdown of the economy and less wealth for all. This logic is inherently flawed, however; though higher taxes might mean people make less than they do now, they will always be able to earn more by innovating and working hard than by not doing these things, regardless of the tax rate.

There are also other problems with this argument that do not directly stem from the logic of it, but rather from its interpretation of motivation and society. The argument that people should be allowed to be as successful as they can is certainly in keeping with the ideals of democracy, and cannot be argued against from any liberalist point-of-view. But without the many people who are not incredibly successful producing and consuming on a constant basis, no one would be able to achieve incredible success. Without a society in place with certain rules (i.e. laws) concerning conduct, business, worker's rights, etc., the situation would be worse than feudalism, and the American Dream of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps would be completely obliterated, as there was simply no way to achieve class mobility in an upwards direction. Because the wealth that Americans can and do achieve is a product of the societal structure they live in, it only stands to reasons that the society should be supported by the wealth that it helps to generate.