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Should the Government Provide Healthcare

The government should not provide health care for all American, that stands out to be my

grounds of argument contrary to opinion of James Capretta who seem to hold the Milton Friedman

Chair at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. According to James the government

should offer healthcare insurance for all Americans. However, this is not a political surprise given

the argument is coming from a person on the political left. Similarly, to most of conservatives,

James advocates the repeal of Obamacare. However, he proposes replacing it a multiple of

measures which build on the present elements of Obamacare, including grandfathering coverage

offered by Obamacare, keeping most of the Obamacare – driven expansion of Medicaid as well as

using force of law to “nudge” individuals who are “eligible but not enrolled” into healthcare plans

via auto – enrollment (Mosadeghrad 37).

Of course, I am not disputing the fact that health care is a vital service to all of us as

Citizens. And health care is a useful approach of protecting patients from high cost of treatments

through spreading the cost amongst a pool of individuals willing to share their risks of future

medication expenses. But I don’t believe it is the duty of the government to guarantee healthcare

insurance for every citizen. Similarly, to advocates put forward in a free market, I thing the main

duty of the government is to protect the freedom of citizens to purchase their healthcare services

and insure freedom to provide healthcare insurance plans mutually acceptable to both parties

(Warner and Rory 54). Citizens should be left free to decide whether to purchase or not to purchase
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healthcare plans for themselves. In fact, some citizens would end up purchasing very lavish

healthcare plans which covers a lot of services. Others may choose to have a leaner plan that protect

against catastrophic illness and accidents only – but costs correspondingly less.

Again, if I may say, the government does not have vitally essential role to play in

safeguarding customers from force or fraud in health care insurance markets. The government can

only assist the citizens by allowing healthcare insurers to sell their plans across state lines and by

repealing healthcare protection mandates that requires plans to offer specific covered healthcare

services. Such kind of free market reform would therefore help make the healthcare services far

more affordable for most of the American citizens. In addition, other healthcare reforms which can

move the United states health systems in a better direction include the strategy proposed by Whole

Foods Chief Executive Officer, John Mackey or the Docs4Patients Care, commonly known as

“Physician’s Prescription for Health Care Reforms.” (Warner and Rory 112) However otherwise,

it is not the role of government to mandate or “nudge” United states citizens into particular health

care plans. To the extent that the conservatives embrace the opinion all healthcare plans or services

must be offered by the government, they will simply cover the road to government – run medicine

(which they argue they are against).

I am not completely criticizing the opinion of James Capretta and other intellects who argue

that government should provide health care for all citizens. I entirely back up the concept of

reducing the differential tax on treatment amid employer provided health insurance as well as

privately purchased insurances and finally doing away with this disparity. In fact, this would go

along way towards uncoupling healthcare insurance from employment. However, I want all of us

acknowledge one vital thing, even if our honorable president, Trump repeals the Obamacare, the

United States health system would still remain a mixture of market run government elements and
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a free market for several years to come (Archenaa and EA Mary 97). Given our present mixed

economy system of health care, I would prefer spending of the federal government provided

healthcare services as well as government subsidized be made as accountable and transparent as

possible. For instance, indigent patients requiring immediate medical attention could have their

cost catered for from a designated pool of government funds majorly earmarked for that particular

purpose, instead of having those spending hidden by a very complicated system of insurance

regulations, mandates as well as price managements which end up increasing healthcare cost for

some citizens and decreasing for others. Through that approach, taxpayers who are footing the

bill for others’ heath care can exactly understand the amount they are spending and whether they

are getting their money worth (Archenaa and EA Mary 87). Citizens, together with their

representatives can then agree on how much they would like to put aside to assist fellow Americans

in need as well as for what purpose.

No one knows what the United state heath care system would look in few years to come

under new leaderships. For instance, you can compare Obama’s era and Trump’s era, can you

notice any change in the health care system? If yes, is it a positive or a negative change? We should

all aim at a government system which promotes as well as protects freedom of all citizens to gain

access to good healthcare which best suits our needs and desires, rather than a kind of leadership

which seeks which seeks to offer health care services for all of us.

Contrary to my stand of argument, in other words, trying to reason like James Capretta and

a few other, in most occasions, we find that the free market system tends to favor government

systems although not always and health care is one of the occasions (Stubbs 68). That might serve

as one of the key reasons to convince someone that the government is responsible for ensuring

heath care for all citizens. But we need again to understand that the system of free market relies
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majorly on people making informed choices in their own best desires. Therefore, this entails that

the people need to have adequate knowledge to make a rationale choice (Stubbs 108). Looking at

the matter from the perspective of health care, we realize that, we rarely have adequate information

in that field. We need to trust our doctors and other experts in health care sector. However, the

specialist should be acting in their own best interest, have an incentive to maximize costs. There

is no real oversight. For instance, let us consider a case where someone has a stroke. The person

could be unconscious or simply delusional. Now, how can that individual make any kind of rational

decision on health care? Not possible. To be sincere, Obama’s initiative of universal health care

systems generally modified the organization of health care so that the driver is not so much profits,

but rather the outcome (Wendel, Teresa and William 66). That may have some deleterious impacts

because proven treatments are approved however experimental treatments are not proven. Thus,

most people can gain access to better health care, however, some edge cases might not. The united

states already have good models of health care systems. Medicare as well as VA for two

(Mosadeghrad 76) and therefore some people, like James Capretta and other, may argue that, it

should not be hard for the government to offer a health care system which covers all citizens at a

fraction of the present costs.

As a way of wrapping up my point of argument, we have clearly seen that in a free market

people have freedom to make their own informed choices. Therefore, Americans are better placed

if given chance to purchase their own health care plans rather that totally relying on government.

Although the government may be favored in a free market, we should know it is not all times. Yes,

government can subsidize medical services for citizen but arguing that government should offer

health care for all citizens within the state is a weak argument for me. The primary role of the

government is to offer adequate freedom of all citizens to gain access to good healthcare which
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best suits our needs and desires, rather than providing health care for all (Wendel, Teresa and

William 92). I understand the government has big role in medical sector, but its role should not be

extended in such a way that it is going to spend a lot of dollars in medical field while we can

effectively manage our health care plans. I thing individuals arguing that government should

provide health care for all they don’t love or State, rather they love free things. What actually

government can do is to subsidize the health care services to guarantee that they are affordable to

all.
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Work cited

Archenaa, J., and EA Mary Anita. "A survey of big data analytics in healthcare and government."

Procedia Computer Science 50 (2015): 408-413.

Mosadeghrad, Ali Mohammad. "Factors influencing healthcare service quality." International

journal of health policy and management 3.2 (2014): 77.

Stubbs, Edmund. "Road to healthcare devolution." (2015).

Warner, Michael, and Rory Sullivan, eds. Putting partnerships to work: Strategic alliances for

development between government, the private sector and civil society. Routledge, 2017.

Wendel, Jeanne, Teresa D. Serratt, and William O'Donohue. Understanding healthcare economics:

Managing your career in an evolving healthcare system. Productivity Press, 2017.