Why Universal Healthcare Can Work In America.
October 30, 2018 by Staff
Filed under Health, Politics, Weekly Columns
(Akiit.com) One final act from Barack Obama was the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare as it came to be known. Fast forward two years and President Trump has found a way to dismantle it and make it an option for patients and insurers. On the face of it, with at least two more years of the Donald in power, it looks as if universal healthcare is on life support. However, all is not lost yet. While there is still an appetite for change, there is no need for the idea to circle the drain.
In the spirit of keeping it alive, here are the ways UH can work in the US.
Regulate Pharmaceuticals
Nexium: it’s a drug which deals with chronic heartburn. Although you’ve never heard of it, it’s one of the main features of a messed up system. Not the pill itself, which is an effective drug, but what it represents. Here, the cost of the medicine is around $200 for a round or prescription. In the Netherlands, it’s $20. The simple fact is the government hates any form of pharmaceutical regulation even though it would keep the prices down. And, being the federal government, they’d have the leverage to strike a deal for the good of the people.
Revolutionize Transplant Lists
The average waiting time for a heart is one year; it’s two for a lung and over five for a kidney. While patients wait to hear of their fate, the public and private sectors of the medical industry spend a fortune on keeping them alive. Jim Plante is the founder of the Foundation for Kidney Transplant Research and puts the cost at 30% of the Medicare budget. One person on dialysis a year costs as much as $80,000. By switching the governing body from NOTA, the country could slash expenses kidney patients finances would be covered.
Invest In Immigrants
As an economy, the health care system would be the fifth largest in the world behind China, Japan, Germany and the US. At the moment, a lot of the money is going to doctors for the amount of care they give and not the quality. As a result, plenty of experts and professionals would leave the industry or would be expected to. Still, the British model of hiring immigrants and foreign workers was and is successful. The NHS isn’t great, yet it’s not down to the quality of the physicians but the people in charge.
Cut Back
Americans have become accustomed to the fact that the Federal Reserve will print money to cover costs. It doesn’t matter that inflation will rise as long as they pay their debts. The culture drips down into every aspect of government, which is why the healthcare system is bloated right now. To cut back would be to change the culture and to ensure universal healthcare wasn’t an expensive experiment that went wrong. With the help of tighter restrictions, the prices wouldn’t need to be extortionate.
That’s how free healthcare could work in the US; whether it will is a different story.
Staff Writer; Carla Poole