The Healthcare Debate

The article that I read was titled “Poll: Support for Government Health Insurance Declines a bit”. The article talked about the ways in which support for government healthcare has declined. The decline of the support for the government plan is questioning the importance of the healthcare policy. Universal healthcare is liked on one end and it is disliked on the other. This article has provided evidence of these conflicting views all of which has been produced as a result of a nationwide telephone poll. The two views are costs and morals.
First, I want to touch on the side where people have declined interest from universal healthcare because they feel as if it will hurt our economy in addition to people needing to have their own responsibility for their healthcare insurance. The article supports these views as follows: “Support for universal health insurance drops to 38 percent if it is suggested that the cost of health insurance would increase, and to 36 percent if taxes went up. Forty percent say it is not the federal government’s responsibility to provide health insurance for all Americans. [Also], opposition to universal health insurance declines to 29 percent when respondents are reminded that about 46 million people would continue to be without health insurance (Connelly, paragraph 2-3).” So, people do not like the healthcare policy because the cost of health insurance has been predicted to increase, people feel as if it should not be the federal governments responsibility to provide healthcare, and people feel as if it will increase America’s economic deficit. But, the majority of Americans who have responded to the issue feel as if the government does not help health insurance now; they would not help them in the future. Basically, this view is based off of costs. The other view is based off of morality.
This article also suggests that people do not like the plan because they do not feel like it is their responsibility to help care for people who did not meet their responsibility of having healthcare. The article reads, “47 percent say the United States has the moral responsibility to promise health insurance to all Americans and 48 percent say it does not (Connelly, paragraph 6).” I think people who agree with the moral aspect does not like to see people suffer and their opinion is based off of their emotions toward the issue instead of facts.
The healthcare policy debate has been going on for a long time. People are having increasingly mixed feelings about the healthcare policy. There are two standpoints in this article, which are costs and morality. About half of Americans do not agree with the new healthcare plan because they want our economy to be healthy and the other half does not like the fact that people are suffering. We have been through a bad economic crisis and are not fully recovered and I feel as if people do not want to take a chance to help others if it will bring us down as a whole. But, this is when morality comes into affect. I am in between these two views because I want people who do not have healthcare to have healthcare, but I do not want our economy to suffer. I think healthcare insurance is very important and now its importance is being debated.
















Website: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/poll-support-for-government-health-insurance-declines-a-bit/