Adam Heater

Professor Williams
American Political Systems
Dec 16, 2016
Health Care
- Why?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness.

The interpretations of the meanings of the Declaration of

Independence are as numerous as they are polarizing. But what
nearly everybody can agree on, is that the government should
not have power to take away life from a person, excluding cases
such as use of the death penalty, or the blurry line of when life
starts, whether it would be at conception or at birth. But even
including these perspectives and opinions, all of America would
agree that the average 30-year-old person has the right to live
and that their life cannot be take away justly. So why do these

same standards of a right to life not apply to that same average,

innocent person when whats taking away their life is a disease?
Ill gladly answer the question by saying that the government is
ignoring their duty to protect the people from disease. As is
widely known, the defense budget accounts for 54% of the
national budget. But I argue that defense as an industry and as
a government entity should not only include defense against
foreign military threats, but also defense against diseases and
health problems internally.
- How?
The United States of America has a long-standing tradition of
trying to be different. After all, that is why we became a country
in the first place. Also if you want more proof towards the
American attraction towards disparate institutions we can look at
the Imperial system of measurements only shared between The
United States, Myanmar, and Liberia. Similarly, America
continues to be ignorant to what is working in the rest of the
world, universal healthcare. Of the 25 countries with the largest
GDP, the United States is the only one to not offer government
healthcare coverage. To be completely frank, I believe that its

time for the United States to get over its own ego, and to accept
that the rest of the world is doing things better than the United
States, but Im not the only one who knows other countries are
doing healthcare better. The World Health Organization ranked
the United States 37th in overall quality of our healthcare system,
barely ahead of Slovenia and Cuba. Many Americans can find the
value in changing the healthcare system, because many
Americans are victim to the inability to get covered, due to
preexisting conditions, or are not able to pay premiums that are
often too expensive for them to afford.
Based on my interpretation of the Declaration of
Independences definition of what government defense of
unalienable rights looks like, I would be a proponent of the
Beveridge Model of health insurance. Achieving its name from
the hero of British health, William Beveridge, the Beveridge
system is the closest to complete government control. Total
government control scares people, especially when they are so
used to the privatized market that exists currently, but all around
us are government controlled institutions, our armed forces, law
enforcement, and our firefighters. With these institutions,

including Beveridge healthcare, the American people would not

pay a single cent of medical bills for their procedures and
consultations. Instead the medical bills that British, Cuban, and
Spanish doctors file go directly to the government, creating a
one payer system. The prices of medical procedures are also
controlled by the government, which is the main sources of
controversy in Beveridge markets, the (relatively) low pay of
doctors. But when these low pays are juxtaposed with the fact
that the universities in Britain are highly subsidized by the
government, and the ~$100,000 salary of British general
practitioners is still very livable compared to the average
American general practitioner who makes ~$170,000 per year,
but starts their career with massive amounts of student debt. In
the Beveridge system, the salaries of the practitioners are still
ultimately dependent on how many patients they serve, and so
they must offer their best quality of care, in order to retain as
many patients as possible. But this system would be far too
different for the Americans to adopt, and would scare Americans,
especially practitioners who would now be employees of the
government, instead of having their own private practices. With

doctors wanting to retain their private practices, a natural move

would be the emulate what the German unifier Otto von
Bismarck instituted with his self-named Bismarck Model of
health care. The Bismarck Model, if implemented in the United
States would make life easier for the citizens, and would not
make much of a difference on the lives of doctors, except
decreasing their salaries, because costs of procedures and
consultations are, like the Beveridge Model controlled by the
government, but instead of being strictly negotiated and set by
the government, the government is able to use its power to
regulate prices, and are much lower than what the current
American prices would be for the same care, Reid talked about
how the prices were explicit, and hung on a wall when he
entered a clinic in Germany, and the prices were shockingly low
compared to what he saw on his medical bills in America. The
Bismarck model also would look familiar to the Americans
because of the parallel of insurance groups that are at the very
center of American health care today. The main differences that
make the Bismarck model of healthcare so successful and
accessible to the average German are the fact that insurance

companies or sickness funds, are in many ways more humane

than their American equivalent. The German sickness funds are
nonprofit, whereas in America, it is one of the most profitable
industries in society. The German sickness funds also do not have
the ability to turn away applicants for preexisting conditions, a
major point of contention for American health care. But while
this system does seem like the government would have an
acceptable amount of control over the healthcare system, we
have to reflect upon the efforts and transaction costs that were
incurred during the times that congress was at debate over the
Affordable Care Act. The stress that went into the formation of
said Act of congress was not worth the eventual resentment that
was expressed from the American people.
- The Solution
Ideally, Americans would be able to accept the Beveridge
Model, and have a single payer single system that employs the
practitioners and creates prices, leaving no medical expenses to
the people. But that type of system is a polar opposite from the
current capitalist industry that is American healthcare. The
easiest transition that Americans would be able to make would

be to a Bismarck Model that is controlled by the states. In a

traditional Bismarck Model, employers and employees would
pay into the sickness fund that would best suit the employees
needs, or one that is required by the employer. But in the
American Bismarck Model, we would see exactly 50 sickness
funds, one for each state. The employee and employer would
share responsibility to pay the individuals share of the sickness
fund. (Or in the case of unemployment, would be covered by
individual and state.) The states are then able to regulate prices
within the private hospitals and practitioners, making them
more affordable and explicit, as Reid experienced in Germany.
But also the private doctors, while their salaries are being paid
from state sickness funds, have an obligation to provide the best
care to their patients, as patient retention would be the ultimate
indicator for the fluctuation of the practitioners salaries.
Because this would result in more government aid to the
American peoples health and ultimately fulfill their duty to the
American people to defend their lives, but would also make a
smoother transition than trying to overhaul the entire federal

healthcare system, a task that proved once to be nothing short

of a miracle.