The Pursuit Of Universal Health Insurance In The Us

The right to health care is recognized in international law and it is not a privilege. The government of any country should try its best to guarantee such basic right of its citizens. Universal access to quality heath care is the hope of everyone and the pursuit of our society. However, all the Western industrialized nations except the United States have established some form of national heath insurance to guarantee health insurance coverage as a right for all their citizens. Universal health coverage has not been realized in the Untied States. National health insurance is regarded as"un-American"or even"unconstitutional"by some Americans. Over a century'efforts, universal health insurance has not been achieved and currently there are 47 million Americans who are uninsured. Is universal health insurance an unrealistic dream in the United States?In order to answer this question, the first chapter of this paper gives an overview of the US health care system and points out that government serves as subsidiary to the private sector is its major characteristic and the reason is that Americans prefer market solutions to governmental intervention, and then analyzes the problems with this system. Chapter two offers an account of five attempts of federal government to reform in the last century and the reasons for failures which are related to the political climate, interest groups, political institution and cultural values of the United States. The last chapter argues that the incremental steps of enactment of"Social Security Act"(1935) and"Medicare and Medicaid"(1965) are the results of political compromise and also a compensation for the absence of comprehensive universal health insurance.Then, is the pursuit of universal health insurance in the United States a dream of Utopia? In this thesis, the writer applies the concept of Utopia held by some scholars: Utopia is not just a dream to be enjoyed, but a vision to be pursued, functioning as critique, transformation and compensation. The paper is written in the framework of functions of Utopia and concludes that universal health insurance is not unrealistic in the United States but is advancing in its own incremental steps.