Rishi presented on the topic of Healthcare & The Repeal of the ACA part 2. This was comprised of two main articles which included The New York Times and National Public Radio. The discussion got very intense with students on both sides of the argument. On the one hand there are those who believe that less government intervention would be beneficial and on the other we have those who believe that more government intervention will be beneficial. Even through all of this I believe Rishi did a great job at presenting the facts and remaining unbiased.
Rishi went through some of the various proposals and options available right now which included Cassidy/Collins Bill (Patient Freedom Act), Rand Paul’s proposal and Ryancare. He went on to discuss the role of President Trump and the fact that he could repeal certain aspects of Affordable Care Act. The presentation ended off with two discussion questions which got the class going and the students debating .
- why is so difficult for congress to create a viable replacement for Obamacare ?
- what compromises need to be made in order to accomplish the bipartisan goal of lowering premiums ?
Those who argue that Healthcare should be Government Ran
Some students argued that the big insurance companies are the ones who are taking advantage of people. People can not afford the premiums and the government needs to step in to help out. If we take a look at other countries such as Austria, France and Germany… that have healthcare for all, they seem to be doing just fine. There is no reason why we shouldn’t implement it in America. We can’t have individuals going around without insurance just hoping they never run into any issues. Without insurance the rates for even minor procedures become so much higher (as pointed out in class by students who had experience in the emergency room) that these people’s futures will be ruined financially. Take car insurance for example, it is required that everyone have it, so that in the case of an accident if one party could not afford the damage caused everything would be able to be paid for. Shouldn’t everyone have healthcare so that in case they got sick they could get the treatment they need without having to pay for it. Shouldn’t we be able to apply this same idea to health insurance?
Those who argue that Healthcare should be less government involved if at all
There were some great points brought up in class which made it impossible for me to decide which approach if any was best. Right when you thought you heard a great point someone would chime in to disprove it or raise an issue with it. We had some students making the argument that repealing some of the aspects of ACA would be beneficial. Government ran programs tend to be inefficient. The argument is that when a private company is running something they have incentive to be as efficient as possible because they need to make money. When the government is running something they tend to be less efficient as they are not operating to create as much profit and usually misallocate resources. (A response to this was that the health insurance companies aren’t so easy about giving people coverage and will often times deny people leaving them to pay for things anyway) Further in response to the argument of looking at other countries who implement this well, it was said that these aren’t comparable as America is so much larger that such as system just wouldn’t work.
One students proposed solution was to lower taxes. Lowering taxes would leave people with more money which they could then put aside for health insurance. This solution makes sense but some argued that individuals can not be trusted to make the right decisions with their money. Just because they have a little extra money it doesn’t mean that they are going to set it aside for health insurance.
Insurance companies are designed to make a profit off of the individuals who are healthy and don’t need their help. By charging a lot of people a small amount of money they have enough to pay for those who do need help and still make a profit at then end of the year. When signing people up they take certain criteria into account. They look at things such as current health status, family history and so on in order to determine the risk an individual brings on. If everyone got coverage what would happen to those who are already in a position where a normal health insurance company would reject them.? Would they get coverage? Who would pay for it? Is it fair?
As you can probably tell, its no wonder why congress is having such a hard time creating a viable replacement for ObamaCare. There are two sides of the argument and both bring up important points and factors. At the end of the day Rishi is right, certain compromises are needed in order for us to reach a bipartisan decision. It may be tough at times but compromises are what America was built on and they haven’t failed us yet.
