Opinion: The Right to Healthcare
A persisting ethical dilemma plaguing the nation's politics is whether healthcare be a universal right provided to all American citizens. Almost ten percent of our nation lives without healthcare. Should this really be the circumstance of thirty million citizens living in a country acclaimed as the first world superpower?
It’s estimated that in order to provide Medicare for All, it would cost U.S. taxpayers $300 billion. Naturally, a major challenge that arises from this evaluation is how the nation could possibly afford this. Are Americans willing to pay more taxes in order to provide healthcare for everyone? Well, according to a 2019 poll done by The Hill, the majority of voters are. But an alternative of a slight federal tax increase in order to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives should be a no-brainer.
All the while, the United States invests well over 700 billion dollars into its military. It’s understandably essential to maintain the nation’s global dominion and presence, but doing so and yet failing to rescue millions of lives on the homefront by not providing access to affordable healthcare is absurd. The question should not be whether healthcare is a basic human right or whether Americans should be able to invest their taxes into their own health, it should be how much healthcare coverage is provided.
The fact that the U.S. can afford to reduce its military budget in half, yet it still exceeds the military budgets of the next four top nations combined, all while it fails to provide healthcare coverage to each American is distressing. Many suggest that healthcare should be part of the free market in order to yield the best results — that competition will bring about cheap and affordable care. Yet, in many pockets of the healthcare industry, the practice of the free market has driven medical prices up by more than tenfold, as seen by the skyrocketing prices of various drugs. By creating a government managed sector of healthcare, prices could be controlled by the actual cost to produce drugs as opposed to corporate greed. For a beacon of freedom to not afford its citizens a right as basic as healthcare is concerning. It is imperative that as a nation, we realize the importance of empathy and morals in assisting fellow citizens, thus allowing us to progress.
Mubasshir Mumtaz is a senior at the Scholars’ Academy in Rockaway Beach, New York and a Next Gen Summer Civic Fellow. He has always been interested in politics - a means by which society can wholly progress. He has always wanted to pursue a career which involves helping others.