Healthcare can still divide the United States

by Kent Bottles The shutdown of the government over the Affordable Care Act made me wonder why Medicaid remains such a divisive issue in American politics. Ever since the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games I have been pondering why the healthcare system unites the United Kingdom and divides the United States. The Olympics media guide in explaining why the British honored the National Health System stated: "The NHS is the institution which more than any other unites our nation. It was founded after World War II on Aneurin Bevan's famous principle, 'No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.'" Paul Starr, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, addresses why healthcare is viewed so differently in the United States. "Americans are still at odds over the most basic question about health care: whether it is a requirement for a free life that the community has an obligation to provide or a good that needs to be earned (and if you can’t earn it, too bad for you)," he wrote in "Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle Over Health Care Reform." Starr traces our dilemma back to the establishment of Medicare as an earned right even though seniors have never paid enough in payroll taxes to cover their insurance costs and Medicaid as an unearned benefit that lacks a moral claim on the community. This history has ...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs