A Case against Universal Healthcare

[Name of the Institute]

Universal healthcare insurance

Introduction

The United States slipped into recession, the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) has now fallen for two quarters in a row. The financial crisis has also officially recognized the U.S. economy. Impacts are already felt in most countries of the world. The U.S. health care policy has a chance of improvement after the 2008 elections in the United States. Currently, the U.S. government is busy on all fronts to support the banking sector and the economy to move back out of the ditch. The U.S. President Barack Obama has already thrown all savings targets in the short term on board and wants by spending the economy out of recession. An important aspect and a high cost factor is the issue of health insurance in the United States. Below I will explain why it would be extremely important now to introduce universal health care, in any form whatsoever. However, the focus of my concern is the health care policy of the country in the context of universal health care insurance. For this purpose the paper will be based on two articles on the issue. The articles I have selected of this paper are “Health Care Special Issue: Creative Destruction” by Jonathan Cohn and “The Health Care Crisis and What to Do about It” by Krugman and Wells.

Large insurance companies in the U.S. are willing to support health care reform to establish a universal health insurance, if certain conditions are accepted to implement such a formula, similar to those practiced in other industrialized nations. The organization America's Health Insurance Plan (AHIP), which represents the most powerful firms offering health insurance to more than 250 million Americans, announced in early December of 2008 its willingness to participate in the national debate on health reform (Jacobs, Rapoport, 2002).

The AHIP wants to establish a system of compulsory health insurance for everyone. In exchange, is ready to remove from its agenda a really controversial point, the right of companies to turn down people with preexisting health conditions. Private health insurance in the U.S. is not currently entitled to provide services to patients with costly illnesses. When this situation occurs, the patient goes to the welfare system if you have low incomes, or should pay for it if they have resources for it. In the early 90's, the AHIP actively involved in the fight against universal health insurance during the administration of President Bill Clinton when the former first lady, Hillary Clinton, tried to secure the approval of a nature to all Americans.

Jonathan Cohn

As part of a new issue of the republic in particular for health care, Jonathan Cohn examined whether universal health care "would lead to an innovation increasingly less access to innovations that are already there." According to Cohn, in a universal health care, the government is "spending would be reduced by payments to doctors and pharmaceutical companies during the test treatments for the cost-benefit (Cohn, 2007)."

Despite what conservatives universal health care "would inevitably lead to poor ...