Media Coverage About Healthcare

Healthcare is a Right In recent history the debate over whether healthcare should be considered a privilege or a right has regained momentum with Obama who has lead an effort to reform healthcare and introduced the bill known as the Affordable Care Act. This reform does not guarantee all citizens the right to healthcare, however it does make healthcare more accessible for millions of Americans. Yet the reform has been met with staunch opposition.

Republicans have been the most vocal critics of the bill and have vowed to overturn it; even before the bill was even passed. From the democratic side, many Democrats feel like the reforms did not go far enough. I believe that not only is healthcare a right in the United States or any other industrialized nation, but it also simply makes sense. Part of the question is a moral question that considers how we, as a peoples, should care for the less fortunate among us who are sick or infirmed.

Yet, it is not only a moral question, it's also a question of efficiency and providing effective care to the population. One of the more interesting developments in the presidential race that has been followed on every major media channel is the rise of the democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. There is finally a candidate in politics that is promoting views that lie outside the traditional democratic platform. Sanders has taken a strong stance on affordable healthcare in the press.

"Sanders strongly supports Medicare for all, by transforming it into a single payer system. Under this system, a single or quasi-public agency would organize health care financing, but the delivery of care would stay privatized. Sanders' home state of Vermont is one of the states that has moved forward with this arrangement... he strongly believes that all Americans should have equal rights and equal opportunities, and affordable healthcare for all is a necessary aspect of that equality.

He's attracting supporters with those kinds of goals, given that 48% of Americans polled in 2013 said the healthcare system needs fundamental changes, and 27% said the healthcare system should be completely rebuilt (Burger, 2015). Sanders is leveraging his views on healthcare to garner a growing supporter base. It is also interesting that he points to the countries that already have single payer systems to use as examples.

"On healthcare, Sanders pointed out that "Despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act, 35 million Americans continue to lack health insurance and many more are underinsured," even as we continue to pay far more per capita for healthcare than other nations.

Thus, he said, "The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right by moving toward a Medicare-for-All single-payer system (Rosenberg, 2015)." Although Sanders may or may not have a chance of winning the Democratic Party nominee, it will still be interesting to see him elevate the debate surrounding healthcare in the media. He.