Free Health Care: Best for Society as a Whole?

"Free Health Care: Best for society as a whole?"

Watching these videos reminded of watching Michael Moore's "Sicko" documentary, but on the other side of the spectrum. Before I address anything else, free health care sounds appealing, doesn't it? But what about its underlying and obvious repercussions? For society as a whole, why would you want the almighty, sinister government intervening with the coverage and dealings of your health? They would have even more control over us citizens than they already exercise.

As some people know and practice, there are a multitude of resources for free or assisted health coverage. According to the videos, most people that do not have health coverage are very low income earners and/or illegal immigrants, or people that feel that they are healthy enough to not have to spend such an outlandish amount of money they are not even receiving benefit from. Most widely known, Medicaid is one avenue of receiving federal benefits for health coverage for families or individuals. Why aren't more people enrolling in this program? Well, for starters, most people grow frustrated and are deterred by the extensive enrollment process as well as the reapplication process just to have this temporary coverage. But, if health coverage is so essential to them, why aren't they acting on this free service? Don't they assume that there are many consequences of this free health coverage just like there are consequences of enrolling and obtaining the already available federal aid from our government?

I have one question for the employed and advocates of free health insurance from the government... Why shouldn't a person's employer provide free health care for its employees? Even in this case, your employer gets an even higher upper-hand when dictating the contingencies of coverage. But, dealing with your employer is much easier and realistic than having to deal with your own "barely visible" government. And, with the notion that employers should provide free health care, this would create competition amongst employers under the idea that you could potentially obtain better health coverage through a competing employer. Competition seems to always better society as a whole.

For the many non-citizens that are illegal immigrants that make up or country, any type of health coverage provided by that nation's government is not going to assist them. According to one of the videos, 18 percent of the population is actually uninsured. Within this percentile are people who would rather spend money on food and booze who consider them healthy enough to flee