Universal Health Care: The Right Choice for America?

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, First Lady Hillary Clinton proposed the Health Security Act or what it is better known as – Universal Health Care plan of Hillary Clinton. Even before the bill was presented to Congress, wide opposition to the bill was rising. American Association of Physicians and Surgeons filed a lawsuit, followed closely by a well funded and well organized national campaign by Conservatives, Libertarians, Insurance companies and other Hillary-haters to make sure the bill failed. And the bill did just that, it crashed and burned – making health care reform in America a taboo that Clintons did not raise up during the rest of their presidency while Hillary was quietly removed from any leadership or visible roles in any organizations or committees.

The move to set Hillary as the head of the task force for health reform was a shocker to many within Clinton’s administration and was already a fumble by the administration in the way it handled the presentation of this new initiative. Then this truly went downhill after litigations and the way she tried to push the bill forward in Congress.  But looking back, we can see the plan that was proposed was one of the best solutions to the rising costs and ineffective health care system our country has today. Not only was her plan designed to help bring in the 47 million Americans without health care insurance into the manifold, it would have also guaranteed that Americans have a cost controlled health care service. Currently Americans who think they have insurance do not find out until they are burdened with unfortunate situations that their company does not cover their needs because of certain conditions or terms of service. But the failure of Clinton’s policy due to certain misunderstandings, dislike of her approach in dealing with people and campaigns by various corporations established Health Care reform as a topic on mainstream agenda. It also helped to clarify and fix our approach to the issue. From learning the lessons of the past, California and Massachusetts have implemented something very similar to universal health care – at least their own version of it. And at this point, anything is better than nothing. But the biggest blunder to the problem is how to manage the cost.

It is easy to say that we will set up a free nation wide health care system and control the costs of health services but how can we practically fund such programs? I think that question severely made companies realize that they would have to contribute to the system more – another reason why lobbyists successfully made sure Congress did not pass her bill. But the question still remains to this day, how we can implement this system. Unless we find better ways of reducing administrative costs – like implementing electronic record keeping instead of leaving a paper trail – can free up more money to be used in order to slowly reform our system. Even if the bill was passed, I doubt that it would have been immediately effective and any such reform – especially in the US with the largest health related costs and budget, would have produced any significant results in short time. Rather, by slowly implementing changes in how we do things and better management of the money in existence being used towards these health programs, we can implement a universal health care system (or a version of it) with little to no dramatic rise in taxes. But in order to achieve any accomplishments in revamping our system, we need to make American public and corporate America realize the need for such reforms and how it would be beneficial for all parties involved and only then can we make a strive with a bill like Hillary’s to change our system dramatically.