Socialism Success In the USA

I’d have to disagree with Michael Moore’s plan to eliminate the current insurance health system. Even though the current system is flawed, the implementation of a new radical national health service would be prohibitively expensive and would adopt socialist values, thus causing many citizens to label it as “un-American.” The greatest benefit of a NHS is increased access to quality medical care for lower socioeconomic status citizens since all citizens are entitled to quality health care. Also, costs for medical procedures and drugs are likely to decrease since the government will find a way to streamline the process or initiate a price lock since they have to pay the bills. The third benefit is decreased administrative costs and unnecessary tests since all physicians, hospitals and facilities will be under one umbrella organization, sharing of patient information will be encouraged and enforced.

Unfortunately, the drawbacks are substantial and would lead to the NHS program not being considered much less installed. If Obamacare, which primarily addresses the forty-seven million uninsured Americans with the insurance exchange, will cost $900 billion, we can safely assume that the cost will be exponentially greater to trash and start up a completely new system for all 300 million Americans. The second aspect is the fact it is run by the government, which can be extremely fast (IRS tax collection) or extremely slow (DMV). How the government prioritizes the program will affect the quality of care; if slow, we can expect long waits for medical procedures and treatment and vice versa. The final aspect is the possibility of fraud, not just by patients and physicians but by others outside of the system. Just recently, it was reported organized crime had taken interest in Medicare and Medicaid since the government compensates claims based on the honor system. Fraud accounts for 3% of cost today. With a larger system, the possibility for fraud increases.

On theory alone, the national health service program would be perfect for our society, especially for the fact that the strain on the insurance system is increasing with the bad economy and large elderly population. At one point or another, enough money will be spent on healthcare by the government and the population to make it intellectually and financially sensible to create a national health service to control spending. Hopefully, we won’t wait until that point to fix the system.