Claudette Gilhespie

Oral Communications

Professor Kevin McLin

America should adopt Universal Health Care

Growing up you usually never have to worry about your health care and what

is covered by your insurance, The assumption is that you will always have health care

coverage, but what if you don't? What if you didn't have to worry about health

insurance at all? What if your right to health care became a fundamental human right?

What happens if you’re not covered and an accident happens? Universal Health Care

is a right to free health care not dependent on how much money you have.

I was one of the many who had never thought about health insurance, I had

been completely healthy and active my whole life so coming from a country of

universal health care I didn’t think about getting covered health wise in the US until

March 3rd 2019. This day turned mine and families life’s upside down. I was sitting

on the van back from Texas after playing a conference match all of a sudden my right

side went completely numb from my leg to my face, I attempted to tell my coaches I

wasn’t feeling well but as I tried to talk none of my words would come out, they

would all be jumbled. My eyes wanted to close but I was so scared if they closed they

wouldn’t reopen. Luckily the ambulance arrived in 2 mins and got me to the hospital,
I was terrified not knowing what was happening to me. When I got to the hospital

they did an MRI and came back and told me I had a stroke and I could be paralyzed

on one side for the rest of my life. Being a healthy 19 year old athlete being told I had

a stroke, I just couldn’t take in what they were saying I didn’t think a stroke was

possible at my age never mind to me. I was a foreign with no insurance and no family

in the USA. I knew the price of everything I had done at the hospital was around

$100,000. Even though how weak I was at the hospital I knew my dad was going to

have to sell the house to pay for that. It made me stressed and crazily angry that

health care is based on how much money you have. In my opinion this should be a

fundamental human right to have Universal Health Care.

Out of many rich nations, the US, even though spending the most money on

health care, does not provide citizens universal health care. Before The Affordable

Care Act people died and were extreme amounts of debt due to health insurance

companies denying people who had pre-existing health conditions. There are huge

financial barriers linked to healthcare that is unfair based on income, race and social

status. Every Insurance Companies in the U.S. are for profit organizations. Our health

should not be for profit nor is this ethical to us humans needs. We don't choose our

health problems therefor we shouldn't have sacrifices due to it.

Although provisions such as the affordable health act have created regulations

it has not solved in any means the inequality that is currently present in the current

health system. I truly believe that Universal Health Care will change America in the

best way possible to ensure the US citizens of health no matter how much money they

have or who they are. This creates equality among the people of America. I hope the
affordable health care act is the starting of many provisions to lead towards a health

care reform and one day America is a country where one doesn't have to worry about

being charged a fortune every time they go to the doctors or every time they have an

accident and therefor illness’s can be caught earlier because they are no longer scared

of huge charges they can't afford by getting there health checked.

I want to leave this by telling you to put yourself in the shoes to someone who

is less fortunate or someone who has worked so hard all their life and are now in huge

amounts of debt for a accident which isn't covered by their insurance. Now do you

think that is fair? Do you think that is equality? Do you think health should be a

human Fundamental right?