By: Shannon Douglas
Health Care
has caused a definite problem within the U.S. today. The outcome of the presidential election will determine which of two
opposing paths the nation will follow on health care for all Americans. If
voters re-elect President Obama, he will protect the health care reforms that
are his signature domestic achievement. If they elect Mitt Romney, they will be
choosing a man who has pledged to repeal the reform law and replace it with —
who knows what?
“The uninsured” is one of the
main issues the government has produced in our country. People who are given
money by the government to take care of themselves are given practically
everything, and it’s understandable for it to be provided under very extreme
circumstances, such as people who are unable to work; but for people to be
under this specific plan who are able to work and are just lazy, cause extreme
debt in this nation. If people are able to work and provide themselves with
insurance, there’s no reason they need to take advantage of an opportunity by
allowing people who do pay taxes and for insurance to pay all the more extra,
because they don’t. It’s hard enough to pay for our own, let alone pay for
someone else.
Health care is extremely expensive and has caused Americans to be deep
in debt; however, it doesn’t help that President Obama helps these people, when
the rest of us have to actually work to pay it off, possibly causing us to
become in debt also.
Romney accused the president of
hurting the popular entitlement program, cutting it to pay for his signature
health care reform law. "We are the ones who are not raiding Medicare to
pay for 'Obamacare,'" Ryan said Tuesday on Fox News in his first solo
interview as a vice presidential candidate. "President Obama is actually
damaging Medicare for current seniors. It's irrefutable."
Now it’s understandable that people would want to re-elect Obama because
of his giving and giving and giving, but someone has to return that money
somehow, and the ones receiving don’t seem to care. Romney’s view seems to be
so much more American because he believes that you should have to pay for what
you get, especially if you are able to. "When he ran for office he said
he'd protect Medicare, but did you know that he has taken $716 billion out of
the Medicare trust fund, he's raided that trust fund, and you know what he did
with it? He's used it to pay for Obamacare -- a risky, unproven, federal
government takeover of health
care," Romney said Tuesday on the campaign trail in Ohio. This is very
alike to what Ryan said previously. Obama says, “ in Medicare, what we did was we said, we are going to have to
bring down the costs if we're going to deal with our long-term deficits, but to
do that, let's look where some of the money's going. $716 billion we were able
to save from the Medicare program by no longer overpaying insurance companies
by making sure that we weren't overpaying providers. And using that money, we
were actually able to lower prescription drug costs for seniors by an average
of $600, and we were also able to make a significant dent in providing them the
kind of preventive care that will ultimately save money throughout the system.”
My question is, how is he going to bring down those costs?
It has been discussed that ending Medicare has been a scare for seniors,
but it’s not necessarily true that republicans want to completely cut Medicare
out, but instead to create a suitable Medicare program to make a voucher-like
system. This would create a decrease in debt because it’d simply be only for
people who really need it. Because funding comes from payrolls of workers and
employees, having a better plan would be critical. This could allow for more spending
to be done to protect people in need, not necessarily for people who don’t need
it, and seniors would still be a part of the program. Ryan's proposals do call
for a partial privatization of the government health insurance plan for
seniors, but only for those now under age 55 that would go into effect in 2023.
This is not exactly how Romney views it, but it is a great subject to debate
on, to possibly make more people happy by finding a medium with the two
proposals.
As for myself, I find it extremely necessary to protect Medicare and
eliminate “Obamacare” to allow equality in our country. I’m not one who enjoys
being in a family that has to pay for other people, not to be selfish in any
way, but because of the information on health care and how Obama allows for so
many people to be uninsured, yet still be granted free money from the
government, I know we pay for people who don’t qualify to be uninsured and
something needs to be done about it as for the best needs for the country. I
believe that Obamacare should be done for and a new health care plan should
start, along with having a more national related Medicare plan for everyone’s
best benefits.
Cites.
"Health Care Issues: News & Videos about Health Care Issues -
CNN.com."CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment
& Video News. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2012.
<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/health_care_iss
"The Republican Ticket Twists the Facts About Health Care -
NYTimes.com." The New
York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 21
Oct. 2012.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/opinion/sunday/the-republican-ticket-twists-the-facts-about-health-care.html?pagewanted=all>.
"America's Choice 2012." Election
Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2012. <www.cnn.com/2012/08/15/politics/romney-medicare-counteroffensive/index.html>.
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I agree that we shouldn't have to pay for other people that could support themselves and get their own healthcare. I also think that going into further debt would be a huge problem because eventually that money will need to be repaid and it will probably have to come from us once we get older. I'm not exactly sure what the right solution is for healthcare I just know that more debt is not the answer.
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