As a pre-med student, I have encountered the argument for public health many times. Each side to the argument poses great challenges and finding a balance is imperative to making the system work. Firstly, all people deserve the opportunity to preserve their own lives regardless of their economic standing. This is simple. The challenges with this, of course, includes money. Who pays for it? It is very easy to say now that the government should just add it to their tab. In addition, the quality of healthcare severely decreases when doctors are being paid less, because they have less incentive to become doctors. The argument can go on and on.
However, I have also heard about an organization called Mayo Clinic, which is a non-profit research group and medical practice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayo_Clinic
It is essentially a public health care system on a scale not quite as large as the entire country but has many locations in the southern and western states. One might wonder if this project would work on a larger scale and if its core principles would remain intact if the country were to mimic its ideas in fixing up its own health care system.
On a side note, an ER doctor i was speaking to noted that at hospitals, doctors can treat symptoms and cures for many diseases. However, in many cases the true cause behind the symptoms is extreme drug abuse. I believe he was hinting that many cases he has seen could have been prevented on a psychological level. Sadly, sometimes we are led to believe that social inequality breeds these sort of problems. Regardless, many different aspects of the population’s health need to be addressed when talking about a public health system.
