"U.S. Healthcare: Most Expensive and Worst Performing"
Lexicon
1. Vulnerable Americans: They are not the abject poor or homeless; they are working class people who can't afford health insurance (211).
2. "You're too sick, so goodbye." This mentality informs a lot of US health insurance companies who deny coverage to "high risk" customers and just dump them. This should be unacceptable.
3. The Great Medicine Question (214): Is medicine a guaranteed human right or a commodity to be bought and sold in the free market?
4. Brainwashed into Us Vs. Them Mentality: Some Americans, the "Us," say they don't want to pay for the "Them" when it comes to health insurance. This mentality is loaded with fallacies, moral and logical.
5. Distributional Ethics: Medicine is a commodity, the best available to the wealthy. The hell with the rest (215). "I got mine; get yours."
6. America's 85%: They want universal health care; however, they don't know how severe the problem is; they don't know that people can be turned away from a hospital, even an ER, especially in the face of nonpaid bills. This is legal (220); Americans are not engaged in the health care debate or pressed with the "first question": What are our basic values? And this leads to this: Should health insurance be a right? Class warfare is another problem, the us vs. them problem.
How does T.R. Reid outline his major points in Chapter 13?
He gives the major myths and repudiates them, a highly effective argumentation format that you will be asked to do in your college essays.
Myth 1: European style socialized medicine can’t work in capitalistic America.
Refutation: Many of these European countries use “private-sector mechanisms” (230)
The Bismarck model is private and even the Beveridge model has some private components.
Myth 2: National health care will result in rationed care, waiting lists, and limited choice.
The evidence in Japan, France, and Germany, among other countries, contradicts this assertion (231).
Myth 3: National health care will lead to waste and an inefficient, “bloated” bureaucracy.
In fact, ALL other systems are cheaper than ours. We waste the most money evidenced by spending the most per person while getting the worst service (232).
Myth 4: “Health Insurance Companies Have to be Cruel.”
Americans assume this because of their experience with health insurance companies in America; however, in other countries all people are given treatment and are not denied treatment the way they are in America (233).
Myth 5: “Those Systems Are Too Foreign to Work in the USA.”
In fact, America has cobbled together pieces from all the other countries. The American problem is that America has no cohesive, logical system; rather, it has a “crazy quilt” of different systems that result in overwork and waste (235).
Obamacare Explained
Goals
To outlaw denial of coverage
To impose billions of new taxes
To enforce calorie counts for all fast-food restaurants and beyond
To slow the growth of medical costs
To expand the definition of povery and add about 16 million to those who are covered
To generate "guaranteed issue" so that no one is denied coverage because they are "too risky." However, this law is compromised because of vague individual mandate.
DALE Metric for "healthy life expectancy" 254
Top countries:
1. Japan
2. Australia
3. France
4. Sweden
5. Spain
6. Italy
7. Greece
8. Switzerland
9. Monaco
10. Andorra
America ranks 24th on the Dale Index even though America is the wealthiest country.
There are dozens of ranking systems, we read, and over and over America ranks at the bottom (266).
What the new law won't do
Won't simplify crazy quilt of conflicting and overlapping payment systems
Won't give us universal coverage
Using the Toulmin Model of Argumentation for Your Essay
The Toulmin Model
- Claim: the position or claim being argued for; the conclusion of the argument.
- Grounds: reasons or supporting evidence that bolster the claim.
- Warrant: the principle, provision or chain of reasoning that connects the grounds/reason to the claim.
- Backing: support, justification, reasons to back up the warrant.
- Rebuttal/Reservation: exceptions to the claim; description and rebuttal of counter-examples and counter-arguments.
- Qualification: specification of limits to claim, warrant and backing. The degree of conditionality asserted.
Why Should America Adopt Universal Healthcare?
One. To end for-profit insurance agencies and the conflict between money and human service.
Two. To get rid of inefficiencies resulting in waste.
Three. Because other developed countries can do it.
Four. Because it's a moral obligation.
Five. Because we spend the most money on healthcare and have the worst healthcare of all developed countries.
Six. Because millions of American families are filing for bankruptcy as a result of being crushed by medical expenses.
Seven. Because in our current system, our policy can be dropped when our condition becomes "too expensive."
Eight. The current healthcare system places a financial burden on Americans that is criminal.
Essay That Shows Objections to Universal Healthcare
Short 3-Paragraph Uses Refutation Essay Format
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