Move for Universal Heath Care
An Important issue that doesn’t revive enough attention that is/should be crucial to every one of us, is the effectiveness of our national healthcare system.
Clemmitt, when Emily, a 24-year-old graduate student, discovered a lump on her thigh, her doctor advised her to get an MRI to find out whether it was cancerous. Emily 's student insurance policy didn 't cover the $2,000 procedure, so she skipped it. Several weeks later, during outpatient surgery to remove the lump, Emily 's surgeon found a rare, invasive cancer underneath the benign lump, with only a 20 to 40 percent survival rate. The skipped MRI could have detected the cancer much sooner, improving her chances for recovery.
(According to the CQ Researcher article, “Universal Coverage” by Marcia) Stories like Emily’s are becoming very common in the United States and are one of the many reasons that Congress should enact Universal Healthcare coverage. While public health insurance programs covering the poor have been expanding recently, students and lower-income workers are increasingly losing coverage or are finding, that they can 't afford adequate coverage. As the book, One Nation Uninsured: Why the U.S. Has No National Health Insurance by Jill Quadagno states, “in 2003 45 million Americans, more than one out of every six people, had no health insurance”. Although the right to health care is recognized and guaranteed in the constitution of many nations; the United States is the only country that does not provide health care coverage to all of its citizens. The healthcare situation in the United States is only expected to get worse. As the Centers for Medicare and Medic-aid Services predict, “health spending will reach $2.8 trillion by 2011 — a staggering 17 percent of the gross domestic product” (Epsein 1). Many experts, such as U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, chief of the Government Accountability Office, warn that if there is one thing that can bankrupt America, it is health care.
Clemmitt, when Emily, a 24-year-old graduate student, discovered a lump on her thigh, her doctor advised her to get an MRI to find out whether it was cancerous. Emily 's student insurance policy didn 't cover the $2,000 procedure, so she skipped it. Several weeks later, during outpatient surgery to remove the lump, Emily 's surgeon found a rare, invasive cancer underneath the benign lump, with only a 20 to 40 percent survival rate. The skipped MRI could have detected the cancer much sooner, improving her chances for recovery.
(According to the CQ Researcher article, “Universal Coverage” by Marcia) Stories like Emily’s are becoming very common in the United States and are one of the many reasons that Congress should enact Universal Healthcare coverage. While public health insurance programs covering the poor have been expanding recently, students and lower-income workers are increasingly losing coverage or are finding, that they can 't afford adequate coverage. As the book, One Nation Uninsured: Why the U.S. Has No National Health Insurance by Jill Quadagno states, “in 2003 45 million Americans, more than one out of every six people, had no health insurance”. Although the right to health care is recognized and guaranteed in the constitution of many nations; the United States is the only country that does not provide health care coverage to all of its citizens. The healthcare situation in the United States is only expected to get worse. As the Centers for Medicare and Medic-aid Services predict, “health spending will reach $2.8 trillion by 2011 — a staggering 17 percent of the gross domestic product” (Epsein 1). Many experts, such as U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, chief of the Government Accountability Office, warn that if there is one thing that can bankrupt America, it is health care.
Cited: Armstrong, Pat, and Hugh Armstrong. Universal Health Care: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience. New York: The New Press, 1998. Print. Clemmitt, Marcia. "Universal Coverage." CQ Researcher 17.12 (2007): 265-288. CQ Researcher Online. Web. 1 November 2009. Epstein, Keith. "Covering the Uninsured." CQ Researcher 12.23 (2002): 521-544. CQ Researcher Online.Web. 10 October 2009. Himmelstein, David, and Steffie Woolhandler. “National Health Insurance Could Save $286 Billion on Health Care Paperwork.” PNHP.org. PNHP, 14 January 2004. Web. 28 October 2009. Lundberg, George. Severed Trust: Why American Medicine Hasn’t Been Fixed. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Print. Masserli, John. “Should the Government Provide Free Universal Healthcare for All Americans.” Balancedpolitics.org. Balanced Politics, 28 June 2009. Web. October 28 2009. Quadagno, Jill. One Nation Uninsured: Why the U.S. Has no National Insurance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print. Yi, Christine. “Cons to Universal Healthcare.” AC.com. Associated Content, 13 November 2008. Web. 26 October 2009.