Healthcare reform has been on the top of President Barack Obama’s list since he was elected in November. The goal of his plan, according to White House.gov, is to provide “stability and security for all Americans.” This includes lowering costs, ending discrimination and limiting out-of-pocket spending for the nearly 46 million Americans who are uninsured, according to the National Coalition on Health Care.
However, not all Americans agree with this plan.
Debbie Ventosa, a registered nurse who has experience in both office nursing and patient care, said she believes the current healthcare reform bills are not good for the country. One of her concerns is that the Obama’s plan gives doctors the “right to kill their patients.”
“Instead of going in and treating each patient with dignity until death, there were some things in the bill that would make it okay to withhold [the patient’s] necessities,” she said.
Ventosa said that the government programs Medicare and Medicaid are packed with fraud.
“If we could cut those programs, we would have enough for healthcare [reform],” she said.
Other arguments against government healthcare reform are covering illegal immigrants, Obama’s “death panel”—which according to Sarah Palin’s official Facebook post Aug. 7 would allow “his bureaucrats [to] decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society’—and the added cost to the national deficit.
Although these arguments exist, medical technology teacher Kris Wells said she knows the impact of healthcare first hand. She said she has not looked at the bill extensively but from what she heard from Obama’s speech, she mostly agrees with the president.
“I think overall the country definitely needs healthcare reform,” she said.
Wells said that if every American had health insurance, emergency rooms across the country would become less crowded.
“Some people use the ER as a doctors office,” she said.
If these people were insured, they would hopefully go to their doctors for non-emergency problems, Wells said. She added that this would “cut costs tremendously” because emergency rooms are expensive to run.
In Men’s Health Magazine in July, Obama said that a sin tax on sugary drinks is an idea worth exploring. If one cent were added for every ounce of sugary pop purchased, like the latest medical journal proposed according to CBS News on Sept. 16, nearly $15 billion would be generated in the first year. Ventosa said that she is against it.
“Yes, change is needed,” she said. “But how can we do it without burdening Americans with tax?”
Junior Emily Matthews, who is admittedly fiscally conservative, said she is “totally against” Obama’s healthcare plan.
“I agree with the majority of Americans that we don’t need to overhaul the entire system and have a government run system,” she said. “We just need to reform aspects such as coverage for uninsured Americans.”
Matthews said that she is against taxation in paying for healthcare reform.
“I think the tax amount for Americans now is a lot,” she said. “If the plan passes and the American tax payers see how much more they are being taxed, they are not going to be really happy with Obama and the government.”
Canada’s healthcare system runs on taxes, according to the National Coalition on Health Care.com. Eight-year resident of Canada senior Ross Topaciao said that his family was taxed $200 to $300 quarterly per year. Food is taxed in Canada and sales tax is higher than in the United States also, Topaciao said. It is all worth it, though, he said, so that everyone knows they are covered.
“Little by little it goes to healthcare,” he said. “It’s better to be safe than sorry because you never know where you’ll be in the future.”
Topaciao feels that it is good that America is taking strides towards socialized healthcare.
“If we want to have a healthy economy, we need to have healthy people,” he said. “That can’t happen with uninsured people.