The puzzle of what to do with skyrocketing healthcare costs, inadequate access to health care, and poor quality medical diagnosis and treatment is not as perplexing as people are alleging. Clearly, we have to curtail costs, which are basically a product of greed, profiteering, and deregulation; we have to make access to quality care unencumbered and seamless for all citizens; and we have to develop teams of medical experts to improve accuracy of diagnoses and concomitant paths to cure or management of disease. These are not a complex set of actions; rather, they comprise fundamental social ethics between and among human beings and the institutions they develop. What is at stake in how we proceed boils down to a simple axiological position, in the form of a question: What type of country do you want the United States of America to be?
I want an America that ensures all citizens have their existential needs met and provides opportunities for them to participate fully in the structures, processes, policymaking, and services of our society. I want an America that bolsters life chances through a comprehensive wellness system that is preventative in its focus and free of charge. I want an America that values the potential of each individual and that manifests this ethic by helping everyone positively to contribute to the body politic. Free access to quality health care from birth is merely one aspect of this overall national endorsement of the person: the short-term expenditure for this new moral posture will have exponential benefits for all inhabitants of this country and will, in turn, redound to increased stability and security of this country in the world arena. I want an America that affirms the importance of each human being and eliminates impediments to citizen-actualization.
My perspective is based on a philosophical axiom I have held since high school: the probity, or moral fiber, of a nation is measured by how it addresses and redresses the plight of the poor. In the United States of America, it is patently clear: we have been grossly unethical with respect to the indigent! The richest country in the world virtually ignores its poor and frequently stereotypes them as reprobates who are solely responsible for their circumstances. But the fact of the matter is we are all interdependent beings, persons-in-community, if you will, and no one lives entirely in a vacuum so much so that he/she singularly, or singlehandedly, creates one's own predicament. We are all, in a sense, contributors to individuals’ adverse situations, including the individuals themselves—speaking of the impoverished—and this culpability mandates our substantive involvement in the effective rectification of their plight.
The costs of medical care, health insurance, and prescription drugs have been allowed to soar while people’s real income has been shrinking. Expecting people to pay for such inflationary increases is absurd, especially when a primary motive for escalating costs is to maintain or expand profit (and to increase the take-home pay of medical professionals). Whereas I am not in favor of escalating the national debt in the process of providing quality health care for every citizen, I do believe there are other aspects of our governmental expenditures, such as excessive support of the military, which can vastly be reduced in favor of instituting a universal health care system.
This universal health care system I am proposing may seem radical or revolutionary. Perhaps, it appears so because the type of America we still idolize and exalt is one that extols rugged individualism, claims we live in a meritocracy, pretends we all have the same life chances, and approbates competition in an unregulated market. A break from this way of thinking is anathema and formidable for many and, thus, we hear only calls for reform and gradual changes, or the mantra of maintaining the status quo, while the conditions of the poor and disadvantaged worsen and an increasing number are mercilessly incapacitated or even die from lack of access to basic medical care.
I understand that change most often occurs very slowly in our country for a variety of reasons, and true structural changes take even longer. However, I choose not to kowtow to institutional gradualism—at least not in my advocacy. In my opinion, every citizen should be guaranteed quality health care that does not rely on a job or an income or contrived competition between the public and private sectors. I believe medical services for all Americans should be free. As aforementioned, this charity will make us a more vital, stronger, more stable, and more participatory and wholesome society than we have ever been! Now, let us as citizens indefatigably work together honestly and sincerely to get rid of wasteful spending, reorder our priorities, and realize this new America.
