Universal Healthcare/ Single-payer Healthcare

*Note - the views I present here are not necessarily representative of the views I personally hold Counterpoint Ethics: Are people required to be ethical? Should ethics be enforced by the law? The answer to this is no; it is unfair actually to force people to be ethical. Capitalism, imperfect as it is, is currently the best system we have for the challenge of allocating resources such as health care. Sadly, this means that some people who need healthcare the most will not receive it. But any other system we use runs the risk of being unfair and destroying the incentive to innovate and be efficient. It was very ethical of communism to try to make everybody equal, but how well has that system worked? It's best to leave ethics outside the scope of our government. Counterpoint Healthcare as a right) It is not unconstitutional for people to die. And it is not unconstitutional for a person not to care that someone else is dying. People have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which means they have a right to themselves, their property, and to be free from tyrannical and unjust powers. Forcing other people to give money in support of universal healthcare actually takes away the people's rights and freedom to their own property (in this case, money) by forcing them to give it to the cause of universal healthcare. Counterpoint Money) The US spends lots of money on healthcare, but the best hospitals and medical innovations take place in America. According to Forbes, 40% of biomedical research articles came from the US in 2009. Also, when wealthy people in other countries are sick, they come to the US for treatment because we have the state of the art medical facilities to treat them. We may be spending lots of money on healthcare, but perhaps this is because healthcare is such a protected industry, which drives prices up. Perhaps the prices we have are artificially high, and the solution to more affordable healthcare is good old fashioned supply and demand. And maybe other countries have a lower healthcare cost because they use the medical innovations Americans create. Universal healthcare may be the wrong solution to a problem America is facing. Also, having a universal healthcare system may reduce costs in theory, does not guarantee our healthcare system as a whole will get better. Counterpoint How Inclusive) You brought up the notion of adopting another country's for of healthcare, but the fact is we are not other countries, and we have different cultures, institutions, population size, and people than in other countries. Other systems can inspire us, but their systems won't necessarily work for us. As I argued previously, we are not required to be ethical, and although our system may not be inclusive all the time, it does perform the best of all systems we have seen thus far. Counterpoint Pre-existing conditions) Unfortunately, people with pre-existing conditions are generally riskier and more expensive to insure. And somebody has to foot the bill - under universal healthcare it will be the healthy people. It is a shame that people will have to pay more for insurance if they have a condition, but companies have a responsibility to make money, and people with pre-existing conditions are riskier and more expensive. Forcing people to pay for others' medical bills is unfair, as I have argued previously. Side Effects) One side effect that is feared among many is that having a universal healthcare system will encourage people to adopt riskier behaviors, degrading the overall health of Americans and making healthcare more expensive for everyone. It makes sense - if I pay for my own medical and insurance bills, I'll try to be healthy so I don't pay so much. But if I don't pay for my own medical and insurance bills, there's not much keeping me from adopting risky behaviors and practices. The system we have is not perfect, but it keeps people in check and is fair. A universal healthcare system isn't as rosy as people make it out to be.