Why do people running for president keep promising health care? We don't already have it?

Question

A lot of presidents running for 08 have been promising national health care. Why, don't we already have it? And why is that so important, to have health care? What are they talking about?

Answer 1

National Health care or health care period is subject that can get lengthy, so bare with me.

America does not have national health care. National health care means every legal citizen of America has some type of health care coverage. There was a 2005 study that estimated 16% of the American public has no health care (that is about 46 million people). Health care has become an increasing hot topic to discuss due to the extraordinary rising costs and upcoming babyboomer retirement.

Ask yourself these three questions. Why does anyone need a health care plan? Why has health care become so expensive? What happens when someone seeks health care and has no health insurance?

Everyone who drives in America is required to have car insurance (and you may go through life without ever having to use it). Health insurance on the other hand is a different story. There is an incredibly high probability that you will need to go to the doctor and/or hospital for service and/or prescription drugs.

We, Americans, are paying for a massive, inefficient health care bureaucracy. Administrative costs, marketing and profits account for 22 to 31 percent the ever-increasing health care cost. In America’s for-profit private insurance healthcare system, medical technicians must contend with hundreds of different forms, billing procedures, regulations and requirements from hundreds of insurance companies; U.S. healthcare companies spend money for advertising and marketing; and, the U.S. healthcare system is based on profit. The increasing cost of prescription drugs also is increasing the healthcare bill, and U.S. drug costs are the highest in the world; Americans pay 30 percent to 80 percent more for prescription drugs than citizens of any other country.

When a person doesn't have health insurance but has to go to a doctor and/or hospital, their cost of care is paid for by local tax money and drives up the health insurance for those who already pay health insurance.

Everyone should have the opportunity to purchase affordable healthcare insurance. The well-being of America's citizens are first and foremost. The problem is how to implement a national health care system and manage the costs.

Answer 2

Americans spend a lot more money than others on health care but don't have the best health. Health insurance is either non-existent or inadequate for about a quarter of the population, and the percentage is rising. Even those who have good insurance provided by their employer are at risk of losing it because of continued trends in the health insurance industry, and most of the country will have inadequate care if some adjustments aren't made sometime soon. It may not be a real crisis yet, but there's no reason to wait until there's a complete meltdown before addressing the problem.

Answer 3

45 million Americans do not have health insurance. Millions more do not have insurance that covers preventive treatment. We are the only developed country in the world that does not guarantee our citizens healthcare.
The result is a distincltly unhealthy population paying double the developed world average for heathcare each year.
A child is nearly twice as likely to die before the age of 5 in the US as the rest of the developed world.
An adult will fall into terminal ill health 2 years earlier and die 3 years earlier in the US than the developed world on average.
Our health care system should be considered a national embarrassment. Some of our Republican friends will try to demonstrate that it is great because people come here for surgery from all over the world. This is part of the issue. We have a healthcare system that would sacrifice poor Americans for the sake of rich foreigners. We have a system geared more for making profit for insurance companies that providing health care.
Change is needed. If people do not approve of the Dems suggestions I am eager to hear what alternatives are being suggested.

Answer 4

The people promising health care think that the government should be the end all answer for everything. They like BIG government and want it to get even BIGGER.

What would happen with national health care paid by the government is this.

Its basic economics 101: supply and demand. With more demand for a service or product, the price goes up.

If government pays for health care, more people will use it, and a lot more people will abuse it. There will be more demand. The price will go up. Who will foot the bill for the higher prices? The tax payers. Therefore taxes will have to go up.

When government tries to fix the price of certain health care services, something will have to give and that will be the quality. The quality will go down.

We will get higher taxes and poorer health care.

Why do they want to do this? Why? They think that a large enough portion of the American populace will want this and then in turn will vote for them.

If these Democrats can get Universal Health Care to stick like Social Security, Welfare and Medicare and Medicaid then they will have yet another program that they can use to manipulate the American public to vote for Democrats in the future.

This is just another step to making the USA more of a socialist country.

I've said a lot, I will say a little more.

On a higher level.....It is in the interest of the owners of the Federal Reserve that the US government become more socialist. We are setup right now in a way that the US government borrows money from the Fed Reserve. For social programs, the US government has to borrow more money. United Health Care would cause the US government to borrow money from the Fed Reserve like it never has before.

So there you go, that's why everybody keeps talking about Universal Health Care.

Answer 5

They are talking about the fact that over 45 million people in the richest country in the world have no health insurance. If a Democrat wins, which is likely, you will at last see a UHC system come into being. It will take a lot of hashing out and tweaking of the plan in Congess but it will get done. This has become an election issue third only to Iraq and terrorism.

Answer 6

The richest nation in the world with 45 million of its citizens without health insurance - and also with one of the most expensive systems ever devised. The only control on costs is whatever the HMO's want to impose, and that usually to cut the treatment of some poor guy who's paid them for years.

We have universal health cover over here in Australia for basic health care - you can get additional private health insurance if you want to, but it is accepted that it is a RIGHT for every citizen to have their basic needs attended to (and by the way, its paid for through the taxation system, not as a cost on employers).

How can you accept that people can be left without medical care in a compassionate society?

Answer 7

You must be kidding, or else you live in Canada or any of the other industrialized nations that have universal health care. Many people in America can't afford health care. Many people in America die every day because they can't afford to go to a doctor, or get an operation they need, or pay the pharmaceutical company's rapacious prices for their medications.

The quality of a society is not judged on how much we can give to the wealthy, but how much we can help those in need.

Answer 8

If you are lucky enough that you and all of your family members are healthy and you are still young, you probably don't care one way or the other but many people have devastating illnesses in their family and need it. Some employers are no longer providing it because it is now so expensive. Also, many people between jobs can't afford it.

I hope that before they initiate a national health care program, they find out why health care is so outrageously expensive and try to address that first. They say that 46 million people do not have health insurance. Probably some of them don't want it yet.

Answer 9

A lot of candidates promise many projects to the people during election campaign especially the hot issue of health care nowadays.

VOTE for your choice as US President on my 360 degrees blog and know who has the credible health care program.

Answer 10

WASHINGTON (AP)-10/13/07-Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the Bush administration Friday of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan and said the United States is "living a nightmare with no end in sight."

Sanchez described the current troop increase in Iraq as "a desperate attempt by the administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war."