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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion

COLUMN: America can't thrive with a health care meritocracy

Conservative ideology in America has constructed an unstable health care meritocracy where citizens must prove how much they deserve coverage based on lifestyle and 
salary.

In February, I wrote a column titled “Health care is a right” that outlined why federally funded health care for all would be a worthwhile investment in the country’s overall success and stability. The column was born out of the national conversation on the future of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” before House Republicans introduced the American Health Care Act in March.

The hostile reactions the column received all echoed the same philosophy­—that a certain type of person doesn’t deserve health care.

The obese, the physically disabled, the mentally ill, the diseased, and the sex worker - these are people whose health care the faithful, law-abiding public should not have to fund. People with pre-existing conditions who require specific, expensive medical attention are perpetrators of sinful 
lifestyles.

Within this school of thought, you must live a good life to get good coverage. As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern and civil rights attorney Perry Grossman put it, “for Republicans, the inability to afford health insurance isn’t merely a matter of economic misfortune; it’s a moral failing.”

Appropriately, House Republicans will smite the poor by withholding the health care access they need.

The Obama administration assembled the Affordable Care Act under the premise that every American, employed or not, should have access to health insurance. The American Health Care Act was thrown together in opposition to this principle.

Instead, the few social welfare dollars the United States does spend must go to the people that deserve to live. Those who can’t afford health insurance are merely paying the cost of leading ungodly lives.

Unlike the vast majority of developed nations, the U.S. still hasn’t implemented a universal health care system. America stands apart from countries, such as Canada, Denmark and Norway, whose governments realized long ago that universal health insurance makes for a healthy economy.

Or consider Australia, whose universal health care system President Donald Trump nonchalantly labeled as “better” than the American system during a meeting last month, according to CNN.

The American system is economically inefficient. With universal coverage, the federal government would spend less money per person on healthcare than it currently does under the Obamacare privatized-publicly funded hybrid, according to the New York Times.

Because we refuse universal health care, we’re stuck with a stagnant system that inhibits the nation’s overall growth and individual citizens’ success.

The often-cited Congressional Budget Office report on the AHCA estimates that 23 million people would lose their health coverage under the plan that would ensure health care for the rich while taking it from the poor.

While the final measures to turn the American Health Care Act into law might fail, the conservative sentiment behind the bill will linger. If passed, the bill should be brought before the Supreme Court and constitutional law should finally reflect that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

America can’t thrive with a health care meritocracy. If conservatives legislate under a morality-based, theocratic philosophy, this country will continue to lag behind the rest of the developed world.

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