A Confession

My name is Brett Walles and I am a socialist. A pinko communist. A European. Or at least that’s what most people would call me when I tell them I am in favor of socialized medicine. 45.8 million Americans are without insurance, and nothing is being done about it. Hillary Clinton’s failed plan of universal healthcare wouldn’t have fixed this problem, it would have made it mandatory for people without insurance provided by their job and who don’t qualify for the government plan buy their own insurance. It would have turned those millions of people into criminals. Obama’s healthcare plan misses the mark too as it keeps the expensive and overbearing capitalist system in place. When I say socialized healthcare, I mean that the government will provide healthcare for EVERYONE, and medicine will be able to be bought at a low cost.
All of us have heard of the tragic stories of our healthcare system: dying patients lie on a gurney because they aren’t able to pay the expense of the surgery or their insurance company refuses to. People being put into taxis to be driven home or to a charity because they cant fill out their paperwork. Americans marrying Canadians because they can’t afford the high prices of the American system. Thousands of people have already died from this system, and I don’t want it to continue.
I’m for capitalism in the business place, but this idea that hospitals can be for-profit and insurance companies make billions while they deny millions healthcare has gone much too far. There is a certain point when making a profit is not as important of all of the citizens of a community. They make their money on the basis of rejecting clients for their insurance, racking up rates, and refusing to pay for surgery and medicine for people who already insured. The “treatment is experimental” is an all-too-often phrase seen on applications today. Employees are given a bonus each month based on the ratio of clients accepted to clients denied. This cannibalistic reward system encourages evil and spite.
Many opponents think that a socialized healthcare system would have a negative effect on the health of Americans. The facts point in the opposite direction. In Cuba, a communist and what some would call a third-world country, the life expectancy is 77.6 years, slightly above The U.S.’s 77.5. The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate of all of the developed countries. The U.S spends almost twice as much money per capita per year as Canada, Sweden, Germany, and the UK.
Opponents argue that socialized systems would make Americans lazier and hurt our competitive edge. However, France has a higher productivity rate than us. In most cases they are allowed to drink wine at lunch and still maintain higher productivity levels. If socialized or single payer medicine were enacted in the U.S., an estimated 2.6 million jobs would be created. These are well paying service jobs that can’t be shipped overseas.
Another argument is that with socialized medicine, you will be stuck for hours in the waiting room and you won’t be allowed to choose your own doctor. Patients will absolutely be able to choose their own doctor. And actually, with socialized medicine, there will be smaller clinics spread around the community, not condensed into huge, monolithic buildings as we see our hospitals today. With more clinics and more doctors, there will be fewer lines and a whole lot less of paperwork to fill out. Whenever someone in Lexington needs to go to an UTC, they get bombarded with paperwork before they are even asked what is wrong with them. They have limited hours and long waiting lines. Do you really want to keep our current system?
The American political system has become riddled with lobbyists and lawyers, who have the power and money to keep such a bill from passing, let it be. They are sacrificing their fellow citizens so they can live large and pay for whatever they want. George Washington said that America would be a nation “by the people, for the people”, but we have failed him. It’s big business that speaks now, and too many people are blind to this fact.
If American healthcare can ever be fixed, it will be because we will switch to a nationalized healthcare system that drives down costs, creates jobs, and gives us better coverage all while allowing us to keep our freedoms and liberty. I don’t support HillaryCare nor ObamaCare, and certainly not “reforms” to be brought forth by the Republicans. I’m for helping America prosper and truly be a nation “by the people, for the people.”