Monday, April 14, 2014

Does this argument work?



I read the article “A consumer-choice health plan for the 1990s. Universal health insurance in a system designed to promote quality and economy (1).” This article was published in 1989. If we take a look at the historical context, it was published during the first Bush administration and five years before the Clinton administration push towards a Universal style health insurance system in the US. At the time of the Clinton push, a healthcare plan like this was highly unpopular. In recent times, we have seen that it is still unpopular (Rasmussen polling data), but has been passed and in full effect. This article is extremely similar to the ideals of the current Affordable Care Act. In fact, the abstract is essentially a summary of today’s Act. In this article, we do see a lot of conjecture. Even in the abstract, we see that since this is an experimental solution to a problem, it is an ideal that has little data to back it in the American spectrum. The article goes through and cites several financial figures and analyzes the gap between the rich and the poor. It lists several credible sources backing up these figures. We see plenty of charts. The problem is that for an issue like this, it is very hard to display facts on something that is purely experimental. The article argues that there is a need for “public sponsors” and “fair and quality health care” in the US and that the government should be behind regulating 1/6 of the US market. It goes through to cite that Europe is a prime example of Universal health insurance working in the US.

In my analysis of this article, I feel like that this article is still a little weak. It states that it is the solution, but I am not seeing the connection between the European system and here. Tax rates are not the same, the population size and demographics are different, and the American style government is different. There is no physical data from the US saying that this is a plausible method for dealing with high health care costs and bringing health care to those who cannot afford it. The arguments are mainly based on projectional data, which as the US learned from Medicare and Medicaid, is not always correct. It was not until years later that the Massachusetts government would do a small test with Universal health care at the State level. We learned this did not show great success. In conclusion, I do agree that the article is very logical, organized well, and cites credible sources, but I believe that the argument is flawed and missing key aspects. As the Affordable Care Act is in effect now, we can collect data and maybe rewrite an article in the future about the success or failure of the effort.

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