Healthcare is expensive and is difficult for many to obtain. Hundreds of ideas to fix it fly through congress everyday. Recently one has gained popularity — the idea of a single-payer universal healthcare program. With this “solution” rapidly gaining ground, it’s easy to say its set up for failure. Because universal healthcare increases tax far too high for it to be reasonable, creates far too many losers than winners with the program, and would kill the driving force behind breakthrough research in our country. Liberals and leftist are flawed behind this idea that it could work in the United States.
One of the biggest reasons healthcare would not work in the United States is the price tag it holds. There are many speculations on how much it would cost the government. The Bernie Sanders election campaign estimated it to cost 1.38 trillion dollars in 2016 (Sanders,2016). The US national budget for 2016 was 3.5 trillion dollars(2016). That would cost the government almost 40% of the current budget. These numbers are based off Bernie Sanders campaign. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (2016) says the numbers they came up differ substantially from the Bernie Sanders campaign. They base their numbers off an analysis done by Kenneth Thorpe (2016). Kenneth Thorpe is a professor at Emory University and was asked to review the real cost of Bernie Sanders plan for universal healthcare. His analysis numbers were enormous compared to Bernie Sanders.
Thorpe’s study states that it would cost the United States 2.5 trillion dollars to finance the universal healthcare plan that Bernie Sanders presented (Thorpe,2016). That updates to be about 70% of the existing budget. With the current tax income the government takes in, it would be impossible to institute the new plan. Even if the Bernie Sanders’ plan was accurate as they claim the United States budget could still not handle the 1.5 billion it asks.
Another road Bernie Sanders could take would be a significant tax hike on the people. The only way to generate that kind of money is to substantially increase not only existing taxes but new taxes on citizens. Compare the prices of what it would cost in taxes versus what the average family pays in taxes, and it shows for itself.
The majority of the United States population, which is around 60% of the US is on employer/private insurance. Approximately 30% is on a government plan (Medicare, army coverage, ect.), the remaining 10% is uninsured (US Census Bureau, 2018). The majority of Americans are not “underinsured or not insured” at all. The majority is on employer/private insurance. To start with the majority of Americans are on employer insurance. The average family pays around 9,000 dollars a year from employer-based insurance (Cantoni,2017). Nine thousand dollars seems steep, which it is. But with Bernie Sanders plan to increase taxes on the higher income families of America, it’s a much steeper price to them. Where the average low-income family gets a significant discount on their insurance, it still comes out of someone’s pocket. He would plan on increasing the households that make around 250,000 dollars a year by 2% which they lose up to 10,000 dollars a year to the new tax. But that is a merciful tax compared to the higher up ones. Families that make 500,000 dollars a year would lose upwards up another 30,000 to the already existing 185,000 dollars they pay in taxes a year. A lot of money is being spent because his plan solely focuses on substantially increasing taxes just for the rich. The solution to help the poor and people in need is not to cut down and take money from other people. Bernie Sanders is right, the health insurance in America is a big problem, but taking thousands and thousands from hard working Americans in the form of higher taxes is not the way to go. Bernie Sanders idea is a plan in disguise to rob the rich of their money to support a universal healthcare plan that is designed for failure.
Not only can the US not afford healthcare financially, but we also cannot afford it in our medical ideology. Medical research and ideas are being suppressed continuously. The thinking of making it affordable and available to everyone would tear down the innovation that exists in the American culture of medical research. Doctors and researchers have growth mindsets. They are always trying to expand what’s possible and thinking out of the box. Why distract the professionals that are doing their jobs by harassing them with new budget cuts and constant fear of their project being dismissed because it cannot be afforded?
There is the argument that if we have universal healthcare that doctors and researchers will still have the same desire to innovate and come up with breakthroughs, despite their slashed budgets and money problems which is a valid argument to make. But whether or not those researchers and doctors want to still work with the same passion is not the problem. The problem is the funding behind the research, the dirty work and the money being poured into it to make sure that the research can go on is what is up for debate. No research can go on without millions of dollars being dumped into it. Though prices are inflated a lot by pharmaceutical companies, a majority of that money is going to paying off the years of research. On average it takes ten years for a company to make a drug, get it approved, and make it to your medicine cabinet (Belk, 2017). On average it cost a company 2.7 billion dollars throughout that whole process. What the Bernie Sanders team and the liberal left do not understand is the real cost of things. Universal healthcare would cut off the ability for drug companies to raise prices enough to make a profit on their drug or nevertheless even cover the cost of the research.
The top 13 Pharmaceutical companies in the US alone spent 594 billion dollars on research for their drugs. Companies are dumping money into improving their medications because they know that they can make an excellent profit. But once you slash their profits in half, there’s no drive. Why spend billions on research when your company now is not going to make nearly as much money. So why would the American people bite the hand that is feeding them? Implementing universal health care would hurt the research that thousands of scientist are working on right now and kill the thousands of innovative and groundbreaking pills that are in the works.
There is a big problem with healthcare in the United States right now. It’s expensive and hard to get insured. A solution is needed, but universal healthcare is not the answer. Universal healthcare increases tax far too high for it to be reasonable, creates far too many losers than winners with the program, and would kill the driving force behind breakthrough research in our country. Robbing the rich of their money to give to the poor in the form of healthcare is not the solution for our country.
