When a situation is an emergency, we call it "life or death". Used to express the most dire of cases, this phrase tells us that you you are out of options, out of decisions, and doing whatever you can to live. You don't have the option to choose when an emergency concerns survival, you either find a way to get out of it, or you choose to let the fatality kill you. So how is it, that in a major leading nation that constitutionally gives its people the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, doesn't give people the right of basic survival to pursue that? 

As Bernie Sanders rightfully pointed out in an interview on This Week, "We still have 35 million Americans without insurance. We need to join the rest of the industrialized world. We are the only major country on Earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right."(Greenberg 2015). The false ideas that many Americans hold that all those major countries have higher taxes than the US, and universal health care is the beginning of a slippery slope to socialization and communist ideals, are simply that, false. Health care is probably the largest single drag on the American economy, and unless the United States follows suit and develops free health care as a law, the prices will keep rising. Due to the crippling effects unreliable healthcare has on the economy of the United States as well as the wellbeing of its citizens, free nation-wide health care should be a right to all it's people.

Healthcare legislation reform began to take action with the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, but with it's proposals came a very heated controversy. In a survey from 2010 to discover the reasons that the 45% of the participants supported Obamacare, a moral imperative was commonly cited as their explanation, with 29% of supporters mentioning, "that people need health insurance and there are too many without it"(Jones 2010). The moral obligation to ensure medical treatment is typically clear and accepted by most, but between liberals and conservatives on the forefront, partisanship can play a role in determining what they decide. However, usually their values go hand in hand without them truly acknowledging it. From the  Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law, Jill Quadagno reveals this in Right-Wing Conspiracy? Socialist Plot? The Origins of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, drawing a connection between liberal leaning ACA and republican values. She asserts how the fundamentals of Obama's Affordable Care Act, which is typically seen as an extreme liberation of right-wing values, extremely resembles the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993 (HEART). With this bill promoted by Republican senators in efforts to deflect support for President Bill Clinton's Health Security plan drawing a nearly identical representation of the ACA, this connection demonstrates how partisan loyalty and political gains can be a main reason of opposition towards the health care reform(Quadagno 2014). Republicans with the HEART bill wanted the same things as Democrats in the ACA, but their driving force was for partisan ability and power, showing how their true goals lie one in the same. Liberal versus conservative objectives in political strides aside, the ethical goal to offer healthcare to all is a bi-partisan objective supported by the majority of Americans.

Even though morally most people support a guarantee of medical treatment, illegitimate opposition arises on more than just partisanship base alone. Misinformation, misconceptions, and loyalty to the false reasons people pass around to politically support or oppose health care reform and policy reform in general can be a leading reason individuals hold an opinion. Jimmy Kimmel comically compared the national outlook on Obamacare to the opposite of a McNugget on Jimmy Kimmel Live, reporting how polls show that most americans say they don't like Obamacare as a whole, but they love what's in it when it's broken down(Kimmel 2013). He then continued to show a video experiment asking people if they preferred the ACA or Obamacare, them of course being the same thing with Obamacare as a nickname, and under informed citizens proceeded to respond with ACA as their answer. Exemplifying how peoples perceptions alters of what something entails if its called "Obamacare", he exposed opposition being falsely created solely based on the name and what they've heard, thinking its probably radically liberal and a bad idea. On the other hand, when using the term "Affordable Care Act", the people can understand that logically, affordable care for people sounds just and appropriate, exemplifying that the misinformation and misunderstandings of the realities of free health care hurt the possibility enacting legislation.

More dramatic misconceptions, such as the reasons for the high price of medical costs being subject to America's high obesity rates, hospital usage of defensive medicine to avoid malpractice suits, and the concept of Americans over utilization of medical treatment, develop seemingly legitimate arguments that make it possible for people to dismiss health care as a major problem. Americans obesity rates are high but disease prevalence doesn't affect health care costs that much, and surprisingly enough, Americans drink and smoke less than that of Europeans, which would create more medical need for them where they lack obesity medical issues. Furthermore, there is no data that obesity increases medical necessity statistically more than that of those countries who have free health care, disputing that argument as just an idea that isn't backed up by any concrete evidence. The idea that hospitals use defensive medicine to avoid malpractice suits, or that the threat of a lawsuit driving hospitals to run extensive unnecessary tests to make sure they're positive on diagnosis, does contribute to our health care costs, like, for example, in America there are more CT scans and MRIs than anywhere else(Vlogbrothers 2013). However, to limit the effect of this health care costs, states such as Texas have passed tort reform to limit these suits, and the average drop in healthcare costs was only .1%. Therefore t]malpractice suits  aren't a leading cause in the cost of health care. The problem of the price of health care is not that Americans over utilize, or go to the doctors more spend more time in hospitals; we actually go less frequently and spend much less time in hospitals. For the price a patient can stay in an American hospital for one night, they would stay in a dutch hospital for seven nights, clearly exposing the hesitancy for Americans to go to the doctors(Vlogbrothers 2013). These misconceptions majorly impact the idea that healthcare costs are due to other problems, and that legislation to reform is just addressing the wrong problem, developing the tragic reason for opposition simply that people are misinformed.

With the highest prices for medicinal treatment and the highest taxes out of all the leading nations, along with being the "land of the free", you'd expect that we'd actually be the ones with healthcare included, making our taxes so high. However, in the United States, we spend more tax money per capita on healthcare than Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, the UK, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand. And in exchange for paying nearly double in taxes than countries whose taxes pay for their health care, only about 28% of Americans rely on government to pay for their health care- mostly the poor, the elderly, and the congresspeople(Vlogbrothers 2013).  Therefore, we are paying nearly double than all the industrialized nations on healthcare taxes, whose taxes guarantee them healthcare, when our taxes cover less than a third of our population. Since we are a wealthy nation, one can expect we'd be paying more for health care, but we are paying astronomically more. If you are uninsured or you are insured but still have a co-pay incredibly high for a surgery or medication that will save your life, you do whatever you can to pay for it, because the only other option you have left is dying. This allows the price of medical treatment, without governmental price negotiation, to be whatever price drug companies set and patients will have to pay it. Say you need a hip replacement. In Belgium it costs around $13,000, but if you're in the US, you can expect to pay more than $100,000(Rosenthal 2013). Common misconceptions attributes this insanely higher priced medical treatment to the US having superior health care quality, higher incomer, an older population, or a greater supply of utilization of hospitals and doctors. The CommonWealth Fund disproves all of these proposed exponents of our high medical care costs in "Explaining High Health Care Spending in the United States: An International Comparison of Supply, Utilization, Prices, and Quality"(Squires 2013). The real reason is that in the United States we aren't as aggressive with price negotiations with drug providers, medical device manufacturers, health care providers, etc. than other countries, essentially allowing drug companies to act without a competitive market, giving them no incentive to drive their price down. (Vlogbrothers). Therefore the development of a market within the medical field allows not only for free healthcare, but dispels the inelastic demand of medical treatment causing a glitch in the "free market" of health care in the United States. Author for the New York Times, Elizabeth Rosenthal, further explains, "If the American health care system were a true market, the increased volume of colonoscopies  --  numbers rose 50 percent from 2003 to 2009 for those with commercial insurance  --  might have brought down the costs because of economies of scale and more competition. Instead, it became a new business opportunity"(Rosenthal 2013). Clearly disproving the idea that the socialization of health care depletes capitalism, it actually creates a competitive market the only place in America that doesn't have one.

Along with the idea of a loss of capitalism, the argument of a need to prevent free-riding strongly applies, asserting that it is not the duty of one citizen to pay for that of another. However, this concept is disproved by how the actual health care system operates today. William B. Yancy, a physician from St. Augustine, recounts how he sent a 48-year-old uninsured, out of work patient in urgent care due to back pain to get an MRI-scan due to his suspicion of a life-threatening blood clot. After the tests determined a large blood clot in his aorta, a potentially fatal medical problem, they sent him on his way telling him needed surgery. When Yacey's patient left the hospital needing surgery to save his life, on his way out a staff member allegedly told him, "You would not put a transmission in someone's car unless he paid you, would you?"(McClanahan 2012). The fact that a human's life can be compared to that of a car, makes it clear just how ethically unjust it is not to separate business and economy from the right to life. That is forcing someone to choose between debt and a life in bankruptcy to save their own lives. Not only that, this doesn't just mean that this patient has to pay for it, it means that so does the rest of the taxpayers. Educator Hank Green, famous for his informational videos on Vlogbrothers, explains that without insurance, a person still gets access to healthcare, but is also responsible for paying for their medical bills, which they typically aren't able to do and therefore become bankrupt. This leave the responsibility to pay for not only the care of the patient, like Yancy's, but also for all the money the hospital spent trying to get that patient to pay for that care. In addition, the outlets offered for those without insurance are also usually the most expensive, such as emergency rooms, making it even more difficult to pay for(Vlogbrothers 2013). This said, taxpayers are actually paying more, and allowing more free-riding by not having universal health care, since the backlash of the corrupt medical system makes the debt of those who can't pay fall on the taxpayers shoulders. Clearly, from people not have health insurance, it not only is detrimental for that patient, it's negative for the entire nation's economy.

That said, free-riding is financially a problem we should accept in paying taxes to all get free health care in just a logical sense. Paul Menzel, expert and professor in Biomedical Ethics, Human Identity and Bioethics, Health and Social Justice, Business Ethics, Human Rights, and The Nature of Human Well-Being, reiterates this as the principles of problems in healthcare in "Justice and Fairness: A Critical Element in U.S. Health System Reform". He asserts how the principles for U.S. health system reform lie in social justice; the just sharing of the costs of illness, and the prevention of free-riding. Noting that these issues must be addressed by faults in "market-failure" in health care and the guarantee of emergency care access, he exposes how it we must take responsibility for the equality in which medical ailment poses a threat to us all(Menzel 2012). Menzel, understanding the ethics of rights and laws, confirms the market problems that go hand in hand in developing this social injustice of providing medical care, many times for things we cant prevent in our daily lives whatsoever. From it simply making sense to benefit our own lives to enact a free health care policy, it also is a moral issue connecting us all, posing a threat to our individual wellbeing and the wellbeing of those with increased  inability to pay for their medical bills. 

Continuing on to reach equality which our nation has always strived for, we must account not only for the fairness of sharing the responsibility of the chance for us all to be medically without treatment, but for the repercussions onto those innocent and dependent affected. Carlos Siordia researched and exposed the health profiles of US grandparents who are the main caretakers of their grandchildren. It compares the percentages of health impairments amongst those responsible as well as incorporating demographic, economic, and household statistics, coming to the conclusion that non-latino-whites may be less economically and socially vulnerable than that of latino ethnicity, and calling for efforts and continued research to assist them. Health care access is gaining support during this time but must be applied accordingly to families in desperate need; showing how not having health care strains equal livelihood and fairness of opportunities for these children due to their caretaker's lack of income and thereby forcing them to either not help themselves or stay healthy and sacrifice money that would otherwise be spent on their dependent(Siordia 2014). We live in a nation where we are supposedly granted access to the American dream, with access to schooling and a life to grow to become whatever you want. If a child is not able to do this, the off putting of not only the inability of his final loved one and caretaker is not just something they have to deal with, but is also faced with the task of becoming a caretaker. If the grandparent were to have to choose to be properly taken care of medically, leaving their dependent without guidance, money, or a home, or to stay home and be taken care of insufficiently by their child, the child loses either way because they have to give up their life in either option due to debilitating medical expenses and obligations.

The steps we've been taking are helping, with the Affordable Care Act, but with 35 million people still without insurance, we be more radical to guarantee free accessible health care to all citizens(Greenberg 2015). Further problems exist than just people not being insured; people who are insured can't get the treatment they need. In an NPR broadcast, Lauren Silverman exposes the health care issues in Texas through the personal story of a mother who cannot walk on her own because medical coverage is being narrowed by the health care system, making it nearly impossible to see a doctor. She couldn't get an appointment, and was denied from multiple hospitals saying her health insurance didn't cover her there(Silverman 2016). With underinsurance raining on those who are "covered" under Obamacare, the effects of this aided health care simply doesn't work efficiently enough to have the results we need. It has been a long-held and much gone-over question as to whether the U.S. should implement a free health care policy, and if so, how to do it effectively and efficiently from both a medical and financial standpoint. By not guaranteeing free nation wide health care as a right, we are basically taking away the right to even attempting to live through our constitution. It is clear that the problems in our spending and financial troubles are more than substantially due to our obligation to pay for healthcare and taxes that are astronomically above those countries that get free healthcare for a lower tax. The strain and incapability of the current healthcare system disables citizens from even being covered to see a doctor, or even if they do have coverage to see them in an appropriate allowed time, forcing people to seek expensive and unneeded emergency care. A topic supported by both liberals and conservatives, an issue that makes sense morally, ethically, and economically to reform, a concept that we are the last to grasp when we call our nation a leading superpower.

Regardless of financial ability to obtain health care independently, all of the United States should be granted free basic and emergency health care. The worthiness of this statement isn't counted just in lives, or justice. The reason that time and effort need to be put into making sure this action is taken is that it is counted not only in morality but in facts and figures, following that of the greatly lower tax rates of other leading nations with a free health care program for all. The military protects our nation, the government regulates us to be as effective as we can, but if our health, our most primal, basic need, is failing us without any way for this amount of people, insured or otherwise, to become healthy and work in society and the market economy, this nation will literally not survive. If it is a question of whether or not we should give up more money in our taxes to save someone's life, then that question has been answered and dismayed from the conversation altogether. By helping each other we are helping ourselves. We are annihilating  the fear of not being able to survive by paying to have the chance to. We are lessening our taxes and lowering the price of medical care, and even creating an incentive for market competition. We are making the proposal of equality and actual abilities for people to have an equal shot at life a reality. And all the while we are making our taxes lower and taking out a huge problem in our economy. We are joining every other nation that is doing better than our nations economy, following the aspects of a society that we started off with, and truly accounting for the first amendment.  A life should not be measured in dollars, and without free healthcare provided nation-wide we are putting our lives in the mix of a chance-based market and federal discrepancies. Though our misconceptions have held us back, being able to see how this choice only positively affects our future, there is nothing from holding us back from creating this policy to improve America and the world more than ever.

