Explain how this debate impacts your topic for Life: The Book. Be sure to address your topic from more than one perspective, as you have six different authors to discuss!
Finally, discuss what you believe. Aim for a thoughtful explanation of your beliefs.
In the course of this blog post, please quote at least once from each article.
The first two articles talk about how health care is too expensive because the amount of money people will be paying is too much. It is already shown that the ratio of working people to retired old people is that there are more old people, and the working amount of people is slowly declining. "In the 43 years since America decided that health care for the elderly would be paid for by people still working, the ratio of workers to seniors has steadily declined. And the number of seniors living long enough to have five or more chronic conditions -- 23 percent of Medicare beneficiaries -- has increased." They say the government is already in debt and the plans for Obama's health care is already messed up. "And even if you put aside the demerits of a government-run health system, Obama’s health-care “funding” plans are completely falling apart. Not only will Obama’s health program cost at least twice as much as his $650 billion estimate, but his original plan to fund the program by auctioning off carbon-emissions warrants (through the misbegotten cap-and-trade system) has fallen through."
The next two articles argue that health care is not expensive. They talk about how we are already paying for universal health care with taxes, so it would not make a difference if we made it nation-wide health care. "We now have the worst of both worlds: we are paying for universal health coverage, but not getting it. In fact, we pay more for health care in taxes than countries that provide universal coverage. Then we pay more than that amount again in private coverage. Additionally, what we have now in the U.S. is nowhere near a free market in health care." They say that what we are already pay in taxes goes to more than just health care. It is implying that if we had health care we would actually be paying less. " The U.S. health care system is typically characterized as a largely private-sector system, so it may come as a surprise that more than 60% of the $2 trillion annual U.S. health care bill is paid through taxes, according to a 2002 analysis published in Health Affairs by Harvard Medical School associate professors Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein. Tax dollars pay for Medicare and Medicaid, for the Veterans Administration and the Indian Health Service. Tax dollars pay for health coverage for federal, state, and municipal government employees and their families, as well as for many employees of private companies working on government contracts."
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