Health Care in the United States Essay

Words: 2426
Pages: 10

The United States in one of the richest, most populous and most powerful countries in the world and plays a central leadership role in the world. On the world stage, the U.S. often challenges other countries about their records regarding human rights. Yet the United States is failing its own citizens by not granting every citizen access to basic health care. Many citizens in the United States needlessly suffer and die each day due to the inequities of the health care system in the U.S. This is a horrible national catastrophe! The United States needs to provide universal health care to all of its citizens and legal residents. While the issue is very complex and touches many people and institutions, it is a problem that can and must be …show more content…
The Medicare and Medicaid systems are funded in part by the annual federal budget. There has been much written in the press during the last few years about the high cost of the federal entitlement programs which include Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. As the demographics of the population in the U.S. changes, with a large population of retirees, some say these programs are in danger of causing a major financial crisis. Basically the U.S. is having a hard time financing the people who use these three programs because the number of people who are getting older and qualify is becoming a larger percent of population. Right now there is money that is being contributed to these programs from taxes, but in the current economy in the next couple of years there will be more people using these three programs then there will be financing them. This is the primary concern of those who oppose a universal health care initiative. They believe that the U.S. does not have the money to pay for universal health care when the existing programs are in danger of bankruptcy at some point in the future. This concern needs to be effectively addressed for a national health care plan to be successful The solution must be viable in the long term and not just a quick fix that will create a crisis for future generations(Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). The citizens of the United States are concerned about the availability of affordable health care. In 2002 in a national