Single-Payer vs. Private Solutions in Healthcare

Federal Role in Healthcare

There are two very entrenched camps in the universal health care debate as well as regarding what the federal role in healthcare should be. It is clear that the private and employer-based system is not serving the American public as well as it should be but scandals and problems with the Veteran's Administration (VA) and Medicare are proof positive that the government cannot be the driving force either. While both of the major suggested approaches to solving the crisis of uncovered people and the lack of portability of employer-based healthcare are both problematic each in their own way and a more balanced approach is necessary to give people the assistance they need but without toying with the private market for insurance in too protracted a way.

Analysis

The federal role of healthcare has probably been an issue on some level or another since the 1930's when Social Security came about and it got ramped a lot more with the inception of Medicare during the Lyndon Johnson administration. Further still did the vitriol extend during the "Hillary Care" debates of the 1990's and now the United States is still within the aftermath of the contentious passage of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare, in 2010. The debate seems to be raging on between two major extremes. One extreme suggest that "single payer" healthcare, otherwise commonly known as universal health care and the common approach on one level or another of Canada and Western Europe. The other extreme is a purely market-based solution, with perhaps only Medicare and Medicaid being the only government sources of healthcare, that is typified by the healthcare market that is almost entirely employer-based.

Of course, neither extreme is the proper answer in the grand scheme of things. It is indeed true that racial minorities in the United States face challenges that most other Americans do not (Snowden, 2012). Specialists need to be full part of any governmental solution even if the importance of primary care is ramped up a good deal (Nash, 2009). Further, some of the points driven home by "propagandists" seemingly have been proven at least in part since the passage of ObamaCare (Knoblauch, 2014). However, a public insurance policy is already in place (Medicare/Medicaid) and other is not the real solution needed (Gottschalk, 2011). Also, keeping the burden on corporations is not the proper way to go (Corbett & Kappagoda, 2013).

Instead, a healthcare exchange ran and populated by the private sector and that removes the stubborn linkage between employment and healthcare is the way to go. Rather than making employment the necessary precursor, an affordable premium alone would be better and a wide-spread adoption of a private exchange would eventually drive prices down or at least stabilize them. The recent healthcare.gov and Veteran's Administration debacles proved that government is too lumbering and inept to get the job done, and in fact both of those services should be farmed out to the private sector so that people, especially veterans, get the healthcare that they need. The recent VA reform bill did this in part but it should be done in full for veterans and regular folks alike. The premiums of private citizens should be indexed based on income with regular working people paying the full price. However, the system can be scaled and adjusted to help those that cannot afford the full premium.