In the United States, the insurance industry plays a very important role towards the health care support of the country’s citizens. The industry ensures that it has provided the help required regarding any medical expenses and this is regardless of whether it is through social welfare or insurance by the government or privately purchased insurance. Health insurance helps to spread the financial risks that are linked to medical expenses across the American population. However, despite this, the health insurance cover in the USA been on the decline since 2000. By 2010, only about 85% of the entire population had some form of health insurance meaning than more than 50 million individuals are still uninsured ( World Health Organization, 2010). Some acts such as the Affordable Care Act of 2010 have been put in place to cover this gap but still more than 30 million individuals remain uninsured (Protection and Act, 2010).
One means that has been debated amongst most of the American political scene, medical field, and entire population, in general, is the introduction of a single-payer system that can be run by either the USA government or private company. With the introduction of such a system, it would virtually make the health care free in the USA. Countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom have been able to implement such systems in their countries, and the system has proved to be successful. In the current health care insurance scheme, the American government limits the citizens on the hospitals and doctors that they can visit and also the prescription drugs that they can take. With a single payer system, it would grant the citizens the freedom to choose the doctors and type of medicine they feel 's right for them (Woolhandler, Campbell, & Himmelstein, 2003).
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The current health insurance is similar to a private body that taxes individuals. One has to buy the health insurance as per the country’s law. On average, an American citizen has to pay about $6,000 annually per person for health insurance. This makes it just like a tax imposed on people. However, with a single-payer system, the people would pay much less. Instead of having to pay the private health insurance firms, the citizens would be paying public taxes to the federal or state government making it much cheaper and efficient for better health care will be provided.
On the contrary, this system faces many oppositions due to several justifiable reasons. In a single-payer system, it requires very strict central planning which is what other developed countries have had to implement. The health care choices have been taken away from the patients, their physicians making the free market forces that could balance demand and supply to be set by just the single player. This, in turn, makes the health care system to be monopolistic. The setting up of such a system will first need large amounts of data that will be used to compare the health care costs and the expected outcomes.
Regarding political considerations, they will have to determine how they are going to balance their budgets without having to raise the citizens’ taxes. This might lead to the misallocation of different services through bringing shortages in certain sectors and gluts over others. The planners will also face a hard time as they try to keep up with ever-changing technology and medical practices in the medical field. With the single-payer system, the doctor’s payment will be decided by the planners for there is competition in the market whereby they can bid for their payments ( Hussey, & Anderson, 2003).
A single-payer system would mean that there will be an increase in taxes for the American citizens. They will also have to give up their health insurance which is provided by their employers. The system might also lead to longer waiting times if one needed non-medical emergency services and longer time for the availability of new drugs and treatment. With the single-payer system barring other private health insurance firms from providing coverage, the major impact of this would be to raise taxes including payroll taxes to fund for this extended coverage. The legislation, however, is not giving out a clear percentage of the tax increase that will be introduced by just saying that is “modest.” However, according to the National Institute for Health Care Reform, it has projected that the single-payer system would introduce a payroll tax of about 11.7%.
Therefore, for an American family that earns about $ 50,000 annually, they will have to part away with $5,850 to cater for this new system concerning taxes ( Hussey, & Anderson, 2003). A surprising factor is that this would still not be enough to cater for the entire system.According to the Bernie Sanders tax plan for this system of $675 billion, the government would still have a difference of about $599 billion which is short of what was spent in 2013 regarding health care. This means that more taxes will have to be introduced into other sectors of the economy that will end up increasing the cost of living for most American citizens ( Sammartino et al., 2016).
In conclusion, The single-payer system might have its strengths such as reducing the medical care costs and ensuring every citizen is covered. However, its side effects are quite long term effects that make most of those people who oppose feel uneasy with its implementation. The increase in taxes, doctors lacking any control over the remunerations, patients having to wait longer for treatment and availability of new medications make are the major drivers towards a resistance build up on the concept.
References
Hussey, P., & Anderson, G. F. (2003). A comparison of single-and multi-payer health insurance systems and options for reform. Health policy , 66 (3), 215-228.
Protection, P., & Act, A. C. (2010). Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Pub. l , 111-148.
Sammartino, F., Burman, L., Nunns, J., Rosenberg, J., & Rohaly, J. (2016). An Analysis of Senator Bernie Sanders’s Tax Proposals. Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, March , 4 , 171-216.
Woolhandler, S., Campbell, T., & Himmelstein, D. U. (2003). Costs of health care administration in the United States and Canada. New England Journal of Medicine , 349 (8), 768-775.
World Health Organization. (2010). World health statistics 2010 . Retrieved from http://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/EN_WHS10_Full.pdf.
