And now, for a post from atop my soapbox.

Being that I am only 22 years old, and have only had my own health insurance for less than 2 full months, I sometimes question the legitimacy of my own arguments here... But nonetheless, what good is a college-trained mind, if not for making arguments without all the proper background knowledge? And what is a blog good for, if not to throw your opinions into the world for all to read (even though nobody might read it...)?

This argument is about health care. And I warn you, it may be long.

I am not sure why, but this topic has really been interesting to me lately. Amid all of the talks of health care reform and "socialized medicine", I couldn't help but feel the need to form my own opinion about the topic. I recently read a book called "The Healing of America: A Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care". The book was great. Somewhat dry at times, but mostly intriguing. The premise of the book is that the author (T.R. Reid) travels to various countries around the world to look at their health care systems... and in the process, tries to get help with his "bum shoulder". In each country, he talks to various doctors and other health care professionals, and tries to find out what does and does not work about their system. I don't feel like the book pushed for any particular model. It was kind of just "here's how it is!".. But nonetheless, I have thought a lot about what changes I would make to the American health care system.... That is, if Barack Obama should ask for my opinion. This is a little difficult to articulate, but here goes:

First off, I am pretty sure that morally, we have the responsibility to provide health care to EVERYBODY. The fact that we are one of the wealthiest nations in the world, and that some 65 million people (the numbers are debatable, and that's not my point anyway) can't afford to get basic health care is just ridiculous. We already have programs to provide health care to the poorest people, and to the elderly, and to children, and geeze Louise, even to inmates. And yet it's the middle class, those who make "too much", and at the same time, not quite enough, who get screwed. It's the minimum wage workers whose employers don't offer benefits, and yet their salary is far too low to pay for the outrageous premiums. And even if they can pay for the premiums, coverage isn't guaranteed, because the insurance companies can still turn them down on account of a preexisting condition! This is ludacris! And it brings me to my next point.

I think that it is totally immoral that insurance companies in the United States are FOR PROFIT companies! Every other country with a modern health care system has decided to make it illegal for a company to make a profit. When you think about it, these companies are weighing finances against human life. In order for their balances to increase, lives may have to be lost, and for some reason, that's ok! It's no secret that Americans love money. But it's totally disgusting that we love money more than we love each other.

Also, I am pretty sure it should be illegal for insurance companies to turn people down for coverage and deny claims. How can we be worried about government "death panels" when we let insurance companies play this role every day? Oh, now I see. It's because the insurance companies are doing it for profit while the government does it as yet another way to control our lives. Clearly.

I think that these are the most pertinent issues that we have to solve. The rest can be debated forever, but we need to agree that the business of health care shouldn't really be a business. Unfortunately, I know that economics tends to weigh more in this debate than our social responsibility to take care of each other.

I guess, in my opinion, what it comes down to is the power to choose.

• Are the premiums of private insurance companies too expensive? Then we should have the choice of a public option, which offers basic care for a more affordable price. I think this would definitely encourage competition. A public option is not saying that the government will completely takeover the system. It's just adding another option. It's allowing the government to act as another insurance company, to offer more basic services for a cheaper price (at least this is my interpretation of it). I believe that private insurance companies should still exist, to allow people to have more choices when it comes to coverage. In the true capitalist spirit, if you have more money, you can pay for more coverage. But we have to at least be responsible and make sure that nobody dies on as a result of limited access to coverage.
  
• I also think that our employers should give us more of an option of what health care provider we want to use. This would encourage people to stick with their insurance companies for longer periods of time (despite job changes and layoffs), thus encouraging the insurance companies to be more proactive with preventative health care... which, we all know does help to keep people healthy, and also lowers long-term costs. If people get laid off, the current premiums should be covered by unemployment benefits. I pretty much think that all people should be insured at all times. (Mandated, I suppose.. Kind of like car insurance? In order to enforce this, there should be a tax incentive..aka, no insurance = higher taxes.(I suppose this does not support my claim of "power to choose". ;) haha))
• We should be able to choose our level of care as well. I think there should be a mandatory, basic level of coverage for everybody, which of course would be the lowest premium available. The higher level of care that you want covered, the more you would pay for premiums. But I think I already stated this in my first point.
  
• Everybody should have the right to choose which doctors and hospitals they want to use, with no exceptions and limitations placed by the insurance companies. Even now, under this current system that we have, my choice of doctors is limited to my "network".
  

Other improvements/maintence to the system:

• Electronic Medical Records. I do realize that this would eliminate my current job (Which may be a good thing. I don't want to become complacent!). Anyway, this would be so much more cost efficient, aside from being a much more efficient system to begin with. And trust me, I know about the inefficiencies of the medical records world. I deal with this conundrum daily.
  
• Co-pays. I am still in favor of co-pays. Unlike the British, who believe that nobody should ever have to pay for health care, ever, I think it is still a good practice to have co-pays. This would help to keep premiums lower for everybody, especially for those who use the system less. There should, however, be a co-pay cap. As in, if you have a serious problem, and have to return to the doctor's several times in a month, you shouldn't have to pay more than a certain maximum amount in a given span of time.

I am not sure if this rant made any sense. It's kind of scattered, I guess. But there are a lot of ideas to cover, and I don't even think I covered everything I wanted to. If something us unclear, I'd be glad to try to rephrase it. I think I'm up for debating this topic with anybody.

Nonetheless, it's definitely going to take some serious work to fix the system we have. We always hear about how the United States has great doctors, superior medical technology, and innovative research, and I definitely agree with that. But unfortunately, we are very bad at allocating those resources. We have more uninsured people than any other wealthy nation, and we also pay more for health care than any other nation. It seems that with all of the resources we have, we should be able to figure out a better system. I'm not sure if Barack will be calling me for my input any time soon. But I hope that somebody out there is able to articulate a better plan. Because we definitely need a "change".