Mason Holbrook

11/10/09

ENG 104-082, Assignment #3

Leah Hutchison

Government Intervention into the Healthcare Industry: Should they or not?

Let’s say you wake up one morning with a splitting headache and a sinus infection and

decide to go to the doctor. Like many other impoverished individuals in the United States, you

rely upon the national healthcare system supplied to those who cannot afford their own

healthcare, Medicare. Once you finally make your way to the doctor’s office, expecting

treatment, you go to the payment window to sign in only to find out this practice no longer

accepts Medicare due to the fact that the government will most often not even pay the practice

for the treatment. Now you are stuck making your way back home only to sit around sick, trying

to find another way to receive treatment. This is the situation for many people in our country

today thanks to the poor quality of government intervention and execution in the financial side of

the healthcare system. If they were to get into the actual documentation and control of our

procedures and treatments, just think how big of a mess our medical system will be.

The Obama campaign is really pushing for this health reform bill to pass. As of the time

this paper is being written, the bill has been voted through the House of Representatives thanks

to an abortion amendment saying basically abortions will not be legal, and is not on its way to

the Senate. This is scary how close we are coming to having our healthcare system epically fail.

This government “socialist” system is going to operate in competition with private insurance

companies, or at least up until the year 2010 where the Reform bill states:
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“Page 94, Pelosi Plan: “Prohibits the sale of private individual health insurance policies,

beginning in 2013, forcing individuals to purchase coverage through the federal

government.” In 2013, after the 2012 presidential election. In 2013, there is no private

insurance allowed. The sale of it will be prohibited.” (Limbaugh Par. 2)

This bill will also affect our private health insurance that is normally provided by many

businesses to their employees by placing many tax impostures upon the business. This is

described on page 336 of the bill.

“Page 336 -- Section 551: "Imposes additional job-killing taxes, in the form of a half-

trillion dollar 'surcharge,' more than half of which will hit small businesses; according to

a model developed by President Obama’s senior economic advisor, such taxes could cost

up to 5.5 million jobs." This is the thing we talked about yesterday, $500,000 for single

filers, million dollars, the income surcharge on those earners. A lot of people are small

business owners, and they file on their personal 1040 form.” (Limbaugh Par. 10)

Also, by allowing the government into our health care system, they will be acting along

unfair economical grounds. Furthermore, with them being the government, they will be able to

set what are seemingly “low” prices and then back them up with large amounts of newly

imposed taxes on every average working American citizen. This will essentially demolish the

employer provided healthcare service benefits, which is the greater part of our current healthcare

system. This could affect coverage and income for nearly 160 million Americans, and more than

likely, even you reading this paper.

The reform and government ran plan itself will be paid for with the new taxes imposed by

the IRS and random costs on individual tax payers, businesses, and even the care providers the

government will make us change over to by the year 2013. This government run plan also poses
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the question of whether or not we are on the road to total government controlled healthcare. This

is only the first step towards a governmental takeover of health care similar to Europe or Canada,

with fewer covered procedures, shortages of physicians and surgeons, and more governmental

bureaucracy (Responsible Health Reform Par. 16). This all seems very un-acceptable and I

believe we should keep the government out of our healthcare system.

Let’s look at the basic fact of why the way our current healthcare system is working. One

reason we should keep the current system is because it creates competition. By paying for our

own healthcare and insurance we expect more from the medical industry. If you are buying

something versus having someone buy it for you, you are often times much more critical in the

quality of the object than if it were a gift. It is the same with our medical coverage. Because we

pay, we have the power. We can call for excellence in our hospitals and doctors. America is the

leader in innovation of new treatments because the public demands it. We have the best doctors

and the best quality of care in the world because we are allowed to make these demands. As soon

as we quit paying we will give up our rights. If our current healthcare system is so broken and

ineffective then why do foreigners routinely come to America to seek out better treatment?

While it is costly, it is often this cost that will save your life.

Another positive to paying for our own healthcare is that we can decide our own self

worth. When the government is in charge we will each be evaluated for a “price-tag.” Medical

care will then be rationed based on that price. Does “grandma” get her $200,000 surgery or do

doctors pull the plug because it is a more fiscally sound decision? Will euthanasia become the

new routine procedure? Democrats had even proposed an idea to have a certain allotment given

to each individual per year, say a couple hundred thousand. When that allotment is up what

would happen? Even the people who had written the bill couldn’t answer. That must be very

reassuring to the parents of a child with leukemia who routinely rack up medical bills in the
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hundreds of thousands of dollars. Does the child simply quit receiving medical treatment or is

this when it’s considered “fair” for Americans to pay for their own health care? This rationing

would in turn lead to longer wait times. Do you want to live in a country where the average wait

time for a CT scan could be months when you can die from the injury that ordered the test in just

a few days? If the bill were to pass, even your pets would receive faster, more efficient

healthcare than you would. You must wait months for your tests and then perhaps a year more

for your surgery while Fluffy gets her scan the next day and surgery within hours. This truly is

living the American Dream.

Now observe the chart above. Notice the change in billions over only a 9 year span.

That’s an $11 Billion dollar increase in small business’ loss of funds due to the 8% payroll tax

that will be placed upon the businesses that choose to keep their employees on a private

insurance plan rather than the government based one. This will eventually lead to the closure of

many businesses, either from the massive amounts of lost revenue because of a huge payroll tax,

or from the fact that they will have to let many employees go to afford the charges for not

supporting the government insurance. All this is being done in the name of equality. We are
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trying to “level the playing field” for those who are incapable of taking care of themselves,

and/or ineligible to qualify for medical treatment assistance.

It seems ironic then that Obama and other government officials won’t be taking part in

this equality. “In Nancy Pelosi’s (Speaker of the House) bill it will be required for everyone to

have government run health care in 2013. Private insurance will not be an option. But on page

225 of her bill it is states that government officials are permitted, but not required, to enroll in the

government run health care system” (Limbaugh Par. 6). It seems strange that the masses of

America are blessed with the opportunity to be equal with one another, but our great leaders will

not be a part of this. I don’t know about the rest of America, but if Obama wants to change my

healthcare, I personally believe that he and his family should be the first to be enrolled in the

new plan. This no longer seems to be a democracy; instead America is only looking out for the

government elite.

Not only is this type of system unfair to all of the patients and potential patients involved,

but it is also grossly unfair to our medical providers; doctors, surgeons, and nurses. Making

healthcare cheaper would directly cut their salaries. While it is true that doctors and surgeons

make a rather large sum, many feel that it is earned by the strenuous minimum 4 years of

medical school in which at least $240,000 of debt is accrued. Sarah Howard, a current medical

student at UK, thinks that the proposed bill is unfair to everyone involved. “People don’t want to

be doctors for the money, they want to help people, but we can’t do that if we’re constantly

drowning in our med school debt.”

Out of all of this it is quite possible the nurse that will take the biggest hit. They do the

majority of treatments, double check doctors’ orders, and are a key learning source to new

interns. Currently there is a massive shortage of nurses because they are under-paid and over
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worked. It’s doubtful that the new system would help any of these problems. Instead all of our

healthcare providers would be overworked and underpaid. It sounds like a perfect recipe for

disaster. Mistakes in hospitals and surgery rooms while not that common are still quite scary. It

is a very real possibility that with the new system they could become much more prevalent.

Imagine going in for an appendectomy and leaving with an amputated arm. Sounds like efficient

care at its finest. On top of this potential issue, with far more people able to afford healthcare

because of the new bill and less and less medical professionals due to the lack of compensation

for their years of education, the patient to doctor ratio is far too large to fathom the success of the

new healthcare system. It is just plain unrealistic.

While America’s healthcare isn’t perfect, it is working. The current system is leading the

world in innovation and quality of care. And while it does have its flaws, it is still much better

than the currently proposed plan of socialized medicine. Instead of elevating those incapable of

paying for quality care it will only drag down those of us who have been paying for years. Sure,

the opposition may argue that by allowing this essentially “socially” controlled medicine that

everyone will be provided healthcare, one way or another. There are many ways that healthcare

could be provided to everyone as Fenichel states in his article, but this is not the acceptable one.

Sure, everyone will have healthcare and coverage, but compared to the healthcare we have and

pay for now, it will be significantly poorer in quality and service. Also, since there will be so

many people being covered the healthcare will actually limit the coverage allotted to each

individual. This will significantly reduce the quality of healthcare we will be provided. Now I

think that is just absurd, to go from working and receiving good healthcare, to working and

receiving almost no healthcare.

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Now glance at this second graph I have provided for you. This shows a survey that was

conducted to see what people thought of their own healthcare. It shows that the general

percentage of people who don’t have healthcare from 2001 to 2007 has roughly stayed the same,

which mind you isn’t very low percents, but it could be a lot worse. It also shows that how many

people are dissatisfied with their cost. Sadly, this number is also extremely high. The only way

we could improve this is to make cheaper healthcare that will be eligible for everyone, right?

Wrong. Sure this will address the problem of letting everyone receive their own healthcare plan,

but this will result in the worst quality possible. Now this cannot be good, because once people

are not happy with their healthcare what do they do? Go for underground procedures or just fly

out to other countries to receive the treatments they need. This, as you can imagine, will be very

costly and hazardous for everyone involved.

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An Annotated Bibliography: “Government Intervention into the Healthcare Industry: Should

they or not?”

"Facts & Statistics |." Campaign for Responsible Health Reform. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
<http://www.responsiblehealthreform.org/facts-statistics>.
Fenichel, Steven. "The ethics of national health insurance: a personal essay." Clinics in
Dermatology 27.4 (2009): 401-04. EBSCO. Web. 8 Nov. 2009
<http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=aph&AN=42104879&site=ehost-live&scope=site>
Gallup POLL. "Americans Assessments of Their Own Healthcare." Chart. Gallup Polls. 29 Nov.
2008. <http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/healthcarereform112907graph7.gif>.
Holbrook, Mason. “Do you support government reformed healthcare?” Web Survey. 5
November, 2009.
I created this survey myself and posted it throughout the day in Facebook to get multiple
college students opinions on the issue.
This source will be very good to show the amount of college students who do not support
the reformed healthcare, and an outlook as to how many adults will not support this.
Howard, Sarah. Personal Interview. 28 October, 2009.
Sarah Howard is a second year medical student at the University of Kentucky Medical
School. She was born in Madison, Wisconsin but moved to Versailles, Kentucky at age 5.
As a future doctor she feels that socialized medicine would hinder the well-being of the
general public as well as cripple the nations’ coffers.
I feel that this source will particularly helpful in the effects of my paper by showing what
a future doctor feels about this upcoming and inevitable healthcare reform.
Limbaugh, Rush. "Inside Pelosi's Health Care Bill." The Rush Limbaugh Show. 30 Oct. 2009.
Web. 01 Nov. 2009.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_103009/content/01125115.guest.html.
Small Business Majority. "Annual Small Business Profits lost Due to Healthcare Costs." Chart.
Democrats Unite. Democratic Party, 26 July 2009. 1 Nov. 2009. <www.democrats.com>.

"Facts & Statistics |." Campaign for Responsible Health Reform. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
<http://www.responsiblehealthreform.org/facts-statistics>.