Get Employers Out Of Healthcare

America needs to join the modern world with a Universal Healthcare system.

Half of all Americans are unhappy with their jobs, and even more are dissatisfied with their benefit packages. Corporations are incentivized to find the cheapest benefit package to fulfill their requirements instead of finding the best quality for their workers. So why are we supporting a system where our employer controls our Healthcare?

And the even bigger question: Why does our country put the burden of providing healthcare on businesses?

This isn’t what other nations do.

I pay $1500 a month, and it doesn’t include vision. Not one dime is subsidized by the government and not from an employer. I pay $18,000 yearly before any out-of-pocket expenses from visits or emergencies. Despite this, there are still places where our coverage isn’t accepted. They will take the same insurance company but only with employer-based plans.

The cost is equivalent to 25% of the yearly median income in the US, and we still face restrictions and additional healthcare bills. My wife’s pregnancy check-ups have been an extra $100-$200 out of pocket each visit.

America’s healthcare system is a mess. This is one of the rare acknowledgments shared across party lines, age ranges, and genders. Despite this, America continues to make little to no progress in improving the situation.

• Healthcare is too expensive.

• There are too many additional fees when going to a doctor.

• There are in-network, out-of-network, HMOs, PPOs, flex spending, and more. It is too complicated.

• Anytime you change jobs, you may have to find new doctors.

• Prescription medication can be outrageously expensive.

• Dental doesn’t cover most extensive care.

• Eyeglasses are a borderline scam, thanks to Luxottica controlling the bulk of the market.

Despite the broad majority of Americans agreeing on these points, our healthcare system remains an expensive mess year after year. All thanks to healthcare lobbyists and big-money donors with agendas. These groups pay politicians to lie about healthcare to steer policy in their favor.

Universal Healthcare has been portrayed as expensive, with long wait times and even concepts as ludicrous as death panels. Communism has been used as a label by people who don’t understand the difference between communism and socialism. 

America is the only highly developed nation that doesn’t have a government healthcare system for all its citizens. Only 42 other countries share the stage with America for lack of government healthcare; several Asian nations, including China, Middle Eastern countries, and many African nations. 

Universal Healthcare is so common worldwide because while capitalism is a sound system for driving innovation and invention, it is a terrible system for ensuring people are cared for. That is where the government steps in with social programs designed to make sure their citizens have what they need.

When people say they are against Universal Healthcare, it is typically because a politician has told them it is bad or un-American. They haven’t researched what it would entail or how America could approach such a change.

An easy way to test this is to ask them what Universal Healthcare system they’re referring to and what issues they feel are with that system. Great Britain has a very different system from Germany, and both have very different systems from Japan. Universal healthcare is simply a term for government-based healthcare for all citizens. There is no single solution that all nations use.

A robust system for America's needs would be single-payer healthcare. This means that all Americans would be on the same government-run healthcare plan. It would also allow the government to negotiate medical equipment and prescription prices, making it more efficient than the current system.

A shocking amount of healthcare costs result from inefficiency. While the number of doctors has risen slowly in America, the number of healthcare administrators has skyrocketed.

700,000 Americans died from heart disease, and 600,000 died from cancer in 2021—the highest rate among our peer nations. Our government is already supporting programs that help reduce these numbers, such as produce prescriptions. A universal healthcare system can expand these programs nationwide, improving health and extending lives.

Combine Universal Healthcare with a change in government subsidies from highly processed foods to healthy fruits and vegetables and ensure that all Americans have proper access to these nutritious foods. America could increase the average lifespan by 5 years or more while reducing healthcare costs.

Over the years, both sides of the aisle have worked on improved healthcare bills for our country. When Obama worked on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, his team incorporated Republican and Democratic plans to create bipartisan legislation.

The problem was that we had entered a new age of identity politics, which also brought with it obstructionist politics. Members of Congress no longer opposed a bill because of how it affected their constituents; they opposed bills simply because the other party wanted them.

You may remember that one aspect of the ACA was the individual mandate. Anyone without healthcare had to pay a fine, which helped ensure that most Americans adopted the system and, in turn, kept costs low.

Republicans were so opposed to this measure that they brought court cases, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the individual mandate was overturned.

The individual mandate wasn’t a Democratic idea but a Republican one. It was used in Republican healthcare reform plans during the Clinton era and later adopted by Mitt Romney(R) for the Massachusetts healthcare system. It was one of the most influential, defining, and successful programs of the ACA.

Before the ACA, Mitt Romney had said that he felt the Massachusetts healthcare laws were a great program that Republicans widely supported, including the individual mandate. But then, once he ran for President against Obama, he criticized everything about the ACA, including the individual mandate.

This is what happens in American politics today. Even if one party likes an idea, if the other party also likes it, or if the other party would “score points” by passing a bill, the first party now feels the need to oppose the ideas.

It isn’t about working for the American people. It is about gaining as much power as possible for their political party.

This form of politics is bad for American citizens. It blocks important legislation to help improve people’s situations or even save lives.

Opposition politics is the only reason we don’t have a Universal Healthcare system in America.