freewrite 9/23/08

Health care is a major issue in this country. Over 40 million people do not have health care in this country, including mothers and their children. Every year children are given minimum treatment from hospitals because the hospital has no way of collecting funds from these patients. This issue comes up every four years as politicians rally to increase or decrease health care.
I personally think public health care funding should definitely be increased. Many people would argue that it is a dog eat dog world. The general public should not have to spend their tax dollars paying for people to visit hospitals when they should earn enough income to pay for things like that on their own. Unfortunately not everyone has control of how much income their family makes. When parents do not have health care if often translates into their children not having health care. Does that mean an eight year old should have to go out and get a job so that when he or she gets sick he can afford to see a doctor or pay for prescriptions? Granted health care should not just be given out to everyone, but I do feel as though the government has an obligation to look out for the general benefit of the younger generations.
Another argument against increasing funding for health care is that it would be too expensive. To give free health care to millions of individuals would probably run the government, I would assume, a few billion dollars. That is a lot of money. On the flip side this investment would be relatively a small price to pay. Increased health care would create more jobs as Health care providers would have to increase their staffs. Individual productivity might also go up as people would have greater access to medicine and therefore would be required to take fewer sick days. Also healthier people are able to work harder on the margin and therefore the national productivity on the whole would go up.
The question then becomes who should receive free health care? Should health care be free for some people and cost others or should the general price of health care go down for everyone?
Should adults be included in this. Personally the solution that makes the most sense is to give health care for those who cant afford it and continue charging for the people who can. If I need health care I'm not gonna stop buying it just because someone else is getting it for free. Health care is a product that's demand is very inelastic, meaning people are going to demand just as much of it whether the price changes or not. The people who can not afford health care pay a far greater price with their own health than the cost of the receiving the health care itself.
On the statue of liberty it says "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...Send these, the homeless...to me." Yet when these people get here, their not taken care of. they remain the sick and tired, and the poor, and health care plays a major part in this.