Why Healthcare Cost Should Be The Responsibility Of Citizens (Essay Sample)

MEDICAL COST
NAME
INSTITUTION
“Welcome to the global summit where we are supposed to discuss how we can provide affordable healthcare to the citizens of all nations. As you very well know, the cost of medical care has continued to increase and the governments of several nations are experiencing challenges in balancing the budget of healthcare. We are left to wonder if citizens should be left with the responsibility of taking care of the cost of their healthcare where they are supposed to take private health insurance or should the governments come up with comprehensive systems of healthcare where all the citizens have access to free healthcare facilities! In our today’s topic, I will explain a number of reasons as to why the healthcare cost should be the responsibility of individual citizens since the governments of the world are too busy dealing with matters of state development where the citizens can never contribute.”
Arguments
It has always been argued that nothing is free in this world. Medical services are not an exception to this statement since they fall under the category of the services where nations spend a lot of money to keep their citizens healthy. For nations to cater for the free health services, they are forced to charge excess tax to the citizens thus overburdening a large part of the country’s population especially those that earn little income. For example, the health services in Australia are free but the citizens are forced to pay as much as 35% of income tax (Glanville et al., 2011). Considering such a high tax rate, insurance cover on such services could prove to be economical. Paying at least 50$ for premium insurance cover by a person who earns approximately 1000$ is affordable. It is not mandatory for a rise in premium cost to be directly proportional to income. However, many affordable insurance plans have arisen thus private healthcare plans prove to be far more economical.
Free medical services can encourage unnecessary visits to the hospital thus overburdening the doctors with the responsibility of taking care of people who are not sick. This would mean that it would be hard for the hospital to provide the best Medicare for the sick patients since they would have wasted a lot of time and resources on those that are not unwell. For example, a hospital with 100 patients where 30 patients are unwell has to spend a lot of time on the other 70 patients. The 30 unwell patients can receive better care by eliminating the rest.
The governments are always overburdened with several development projects most of which the citizens cannot contribute in. Projects such as the development of infrastructure are a liability of the government. Citizens should, therefore, be left to take care of the services that they can make contributions in thus allowing the government to concentrate on the rest of the developments which translate to a better lifestyle.
Counterargument
Those who are against free medical care system argue that citizens of every state need and are entitled to free medical care. This is due to the fact that it is not everyone who can afford medical care services and insurance coverage. Such people can only afford over the counter medicine which instead of curing them cause more suffering which sometimes result to deaths. Some hospital tends to accept and administer medical care to patients who do not have enough money. Thereafter, they give them time to settle their ...