Healthcare has been such a controversial issue when it really shouldn’t be. I’ve seen people debating the necessity of it, some even saying that it’s not a big issue. Truthfully, I think anyone who says that healthcare is a commodity doesn’t understand what healthcare truly is.
One of the main people I’m having trouble understanding is Ben Shapiro. He wrote an article entitled, “Health Care Is a Commodity, Not a Right”. It seemed to focus more on the economic aspect of healthcare rather than the human aspect. He talks on and on about how ‘strict’ government regulation would cause less Americans to become doctors which would in turn cause temporary shortages. This would lead to people not getting what they need and the whole system would fail. This picture he’s creating, it’s based on the premise that people will choose not to become doctors because healthcare will be over-regulated. Now, I may stupid and naive, but I didn’t know that doctors got into the profession to become rich. That their sole drive was to be free to practice and make lots of money. Silly me, I thought they became doctors to help people. But if this is how they think, maybe they shouldn’t be doctors. Many fields are regulated: oil, petroleum, fishing, and they are doing just fine. But according to Shapiro, that’s not the point. We need to focus on the money! Not the morality of things!
In fact, his article was a response to a tweet he sent out in response to Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders was commenting on the fact that people can go to the doctor and get a diagnosis but can’t afford the treatment. Shapiro then equated healthcare to buying furniture. This is where an uproar was caused. How dare he compare furniture to medical care? But as he said, comparing the value of the two would be idiotic. He was merely stating how “rights that derive from individual need inevitably violate individual autonomy”. In other words, since healthcare caters to each person’s individual needs, why should a healthy person have to pay for a sick person’s healthcare?
This type of thinking is exactly why most people oppose the Affordable Care Act. Premiums skyrocketed because there weren’t enough healthy young people to subsidize the sicker people. Many young folks decided against signing up and paid a fine to opt out. And in a lot of ways it makes sense. If you’re a healthy young person, why should you have to pay ‘expensive’ healthcare just to help other people? This way of thinking leads to sick uninsured people. Let me explain, if young people chose to opt-out they’d be uninsured. If they happened to develop an illness or even cancer, they might not be able to get coverage. Without the Affordable Care Act, insurers will be able to reject people with pre-existing conditions or charge you more than the average person.
A lot of democrats have their own ideas for healthcare, and very few republicans, but one of the biggest advocates for healthcare is Bernie Sanders. His main selling point is his Medicare-for-all approach.
“We say to the private health insurance companies: whether you like it or not, the United States will join every other major country on earth and guarantee healthcare to all people as a right. All Americans are entitled to go to the doctor when they’re sick and not go bankrupt after staying in the hospital.”
-Bernie Sanders
This pretty much sums up my opinions on healthcare. Because, for me, healthcare is a necessity. In the summer before my junior year of high school I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I had previously been diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder and was later diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder. That’s a lot for a 15-year-old to handle. I was put on various medications and before you scream that they’re placebos, stop. Taking medication is the only thing that kept me sane. As the disorder was becoming more apparent and my hormones were failing to regulate, I was a mess. I had to reduce my classes, dropout of my sports, and lost all my friends. Now by all of them, I mean all of them. My mood was so unstable that I was hard to deal with. I had to give up on the dreams I had and was forced to move on. It took about two years for my doctors to find the right medications. Now I am able to go back to college. I can converse with others, hold stable relationships, and even start to drive. Medication saved my life.
Now if I didn’t have adequate healthcare, I would probably be dead. If my moods had never regulated, if I hadn’t gotten the therapy I needed, I’d be dead. Having good healthcare was a necessity. And now I am worrying about what I’m going to do when I turn 26. And lots of people tell me not to worry about that, I still have five years, but I can’t. I’ll need employer-based and a good one at that. I’m still in college and I don’t know when I’ll graduate. I have to be realistic in my timelines, I can’t rush through courses or even have a ‘normal’ workload. And on top of graduating I have to find a well-paying job with good coverage. And for those of you going, ‘why don’t you just get a minimum wage job?’. Well, I could, but the insurance would not cover even a fraction of what I need. Just one of my five prescriptions costs $1,564 a year. The max of a McDonald’s healthcare worker’s insurance is around $2,000. So, not only would my insurance not cover all of my medications, but I wouldn’t be able to attend therapy or even a general practitioner.
My parents have agreed to pay private insurance for me while I work on getting a job. I am extremely lucky to have that option. Many people don’t. You see them rationing insulin, getting turned away from emergency rooms, even forgoing the doctor completely. Healthcare isn’t something we can do without. In fact, Article 25 of the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states :
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Even the UN says that healthcare is a human right. That having adequate food, housing, and medical care is a human right. Seeing people try to deny us that right is ridiculous.
Politics in a Nutshell 