Joe Tsao

Yes, the bill is passed, and most of us are tired of all the arguments surrounding HCR already. If you are interested in reading about my thoughts, however, go on:) The reform and its debate is far from over, and arguments for or against now can have great meaning in other/future subjects.

When any important decision or law is made or passed, it is always important to balance out the pros and the cons. Therefore, I believe that before one adamantly argues or takes action on his or her views, that person should take an effort to understand the issue itself and to accept the legitimate arguments of his or her opponents, no matter the confidence in one’s own views. Failure to do so may cause of promote unethical actions. For instance, one doctor was recently reported as hanging up a sign stating “If you voted for Obama, seek care elsewhere.” The refusal of patient care (or at least adding the danger of discriminatory care) based on political views it itself unethical. But back to the point – the doctor seemed uninformed and in at least one of his main arguments (having to do with nursing home payments), was completely wrong, and his inaccurate views were causing harm to his patients. This applies even more strongly to the government and the media. One-sided arguments that are false, exaggerated, and uninformed (“Obama death camps”) can easily propagate into a mob of biased, thoughtless opinions that in some cases may make a man act against his own health (Medicaid-receivers who protest against government interference of health care).

Now, given my previous statement, I can only state support or opposition to the reform in the context of what I know about the bill. So far, on principle (and the following will state one argument supporting), I acknowledge that there are many consequences of the bill, certain or predicted, that I have not fully taken into account because I don’t understand them completely. Nevertheless, here is an argument for the bill.

First of all, I want to confront the illegitimacy of opposing the bill based solely off of the title ascribed on to it by many, “socialist.” Because these arguments fundamentally argue against government involvement in the health care system, I will attempt to argue the necessity of government involvement by first creating a starting point for “socialist health care” as something that isn’t intrinsically right nor intrinsically wrong due solely to the negative connotation of the title.

Now, we long have accepted the role of the government in offering us many public services. We consider it justified for the government to tax us for services that we cannot obtain ourselves through the free market system. For instance, if France were to invade us (OK bad example), we as a country would be in danger, for we as individuals would have nothing but Kindles and iPads to protect ourselves. (We could hire private armies, but how well would that work?) We therefore justify paying taxes so that the government can allow us a protection of our lives (and liberty, and pursuit of happiness). Having private cops and firefighters would be so inefficient and impractical that we justify paying public funds for these to be “socialist” enterprises. Similar (maybe even same) arguments are provided by my friend Jae, but we diverge at this point. He argues as many have that  the government should not involve itself in doing anything but to protect life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I argue that it is its responsibility to do so.

Take public school as an example. Certainly, without government involvement, we would be able to create great prestigious institutions in a market economy, advancing knowledge and the future of all who paid for school. How many people, however, would actually be able to afford a private school? An argument made by some states that as long as someone works hard, he or she will be able to succeed in life. If education wasn’t “socialist,” many parents wouldn’t even be able to afford to enroll their children in elementary school. Would these people dare to argue, then, that someone who wasn’t able to afford to learn to read, if he works really hard, is likely to succeed in life? We can’t even talk about the government’s role in protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit to happiness until people actually have access to such things. The child who could not attend school in the market economy for education would never have access to the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, the government’s role isn’t just to protect, but to remove barriers to access as well, and therefore can justify taxing to create public schools.

Medical care can be argued in a parallel manner. Under status quo before the reform, many did not have access to health care, and therefore did not have the possibility of improving their quality of life through seeing a doctor. Those who are poor and not able to be on Medicaid, and those with preexisting conditions, were unfairly burdened due to pure luck like the kids who would not be able to afford private schools. The government has the responsibility to not only protect these people from having others take their lives, but to lessen barriers to life-saving procedures as well. Therefore, I believe that it may be ethically justified to raise taxes for health care (note, this is already done through Medicaid and Medicare), and to impose a mandate with subsidies (preventing a death-spiral of rising insurance costs due to healthier people dropping out, leading back to the sick not being able to afford medical coverage).

Of course, there are frames that may argue overall decreased accessibility of care as well. My goal here is to merely provide an argument through a point of view for now.

Well if you got this far, thanks for reading! Comments are appreciated, and criticisms are appreciated even more.

http://www.joetsao.com