Many countries do have universal health care where all citizens of that country are entitled to free medical care. However, it is important to note that many of these countries have a very different economic structure than the United States and as such, government health care in the United States is not as easy as an act of Congress. The most important thing that people need to be made aware of is that government funded health care costs money. Governments are funded by its taxpayers. Therefore, taxpayers will have to pay for the cost of health care. The most obvious way that this money will be collected is through higher taxes. Therefore, if citizens are willing to pay the bill of health care for all, then the government should pay for all medical care.
Depending on how the tax would be assessed against the public, many taxpayers might be footing more of the bill than there use of such medical care would cost. As such, many taxpayers may feel that they are paying for others to receive health care. I understand the argument. If such a health care tax was evenly assessed against all taxpayers, a healthy person that visits the doctor maybe twice per year would not be getting as much “bang for his/her buck” than would be an unhealthy person that visits the doctor more than twice per year. As such, even though the tax is evenly assessed, the cost per use is not and thus, some people may feel cheated. This situation becomes even “stickier” when participants in the program voluntarily engage in behavior (such as smoking, drinking, drug abuse, etc.) that has a negative impact on their health.
Even though the above argument makes sense, it has a small flaw. Although it is true that the cost per use may be disproportionate, the cost per opportunity is not. If a person wanted to visit the doctor for every small problem that he/she may have, such a system may allow them to do so (absent any laws that are enacted to prevent abuse of such a system) and therefore, just because somebody takes advantage of the his/her opportunity to visit a doctor and another does not, this does not mean that the tax is unfairly distributed. The point is, everybody has the same opportunity to visit the doctor as much as they want and thus, the tax would be fair if it was evenly distributed.
As stated above, if people are willing to pay the costs of such a system, the government should pay for it. People need to be educated of all the costs of enactment, regulation, maintenance, and enforcement of such a system. At this point, people need to be informed of the amount of additional taxes that each person would have to pay to fund this system and the cost of any increases as the population grows. If the majority of people are willing to pay these costs, then the government should enact a universal health care program.