The Constitution of the United State of America grants the citizens of America many freedoms and liberties. Some Americans believe one of those rights is for the government to provide a good health care. The political battle of if the American government should provide its citizens with a good health care plan has waged because both parties do not agree on if the government should. A Washington Times editorial labeled, “Better Healthcare, State Style” believes it has found an alternative to end the so-called deadlock of the battle of healthcare. The editorial believes healthcare could be more effective if the state has the power to decide what they believe is important or needed regarding heath care.
The current form of health care, Obamacare, wants states to use it one-size-fits all plan instead of creating their own plan. Eight years after the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, it can be seen more flexible is needed in order for a plan to work. The plan currently is using a one-size-fits-all plan, and it has not worked as plan. Many states have avoided the bump of the Affordable Care Act by using waivers to opt out of using Obamacare as the primary healthcare plan. The allows the states get to create their own healthcare plan. In the article it looks at a paper published by the Heritage Foundation. The idea given forth by the paper was to have state collected the money which the federal government used to pay the insurance companies as premium subsides. State would add the money collected for the federal government and add some of their own state money to cover the costs of the large medical bills. This would allow healthy people and sick people to not be grouped up to avoid high premiums.
This year Alaska used a waiver and the results looked promising because it projected a decrease in premiums and increase in an enrollment of the program. As of now four other states have begun to use waivers to opt out of using the federal government created Obamacare. The shows a trend of state opting to use their own version.
The issue of healthcare is important according to many polls stated in the paper. A Fox news poll ranked healthcare as important as the state of economy at number one. Another poll by Pew Research Center found out that a majority of those involved in the poll to states it is the federal government’s job to provide the citizens of America with healthcare. In the same poll, it stated a small percentage of people wanted the government to be the sole organization to decide who will receive the provided health care and who does not.
The majority of people in America still strongly believe in a federal government provides a health care system even though the current plan has not made true on all the promises made by Obama. A strong majority, about 67 percent, of voter believe in having socialized medicine or having all of health and hospital care be payed by public funds.
The problem with that is for the Americans who do not receive employer-based healthcare coverage. They are forced to pay using Obama care and this situation has skyrocketed in the last couple of years. A way to avoid using Obamacare is to have an individual mandate to repeal Obamacare. This will let individual taxpayers to withdraw from Obamacare. This gives the citizens of America to not be forced to use Obamacare. If more and more states began to follow this trend, America could move away from using Obamacare or socialized medicine. This solution could be more effective than the current solutions being used.
