Quick Insurance Tips

What are the Advantages of Universal Healthcare?

How much will universal healthcare cost the US?  It may be that Universal healthcare benefits the United States far more than it costs us.  Universal healthcare has the potential of helping people stay healthier and thereby keeping them in the workforce longer.  This can result in people spending more time being tax payear as opposed to being “tax spenders.”  This may mean increasing our tax base.  This may more than offset the increased taxes that we will have to pay to afford universal health care.

A Universal healthcare program that improves the lives of working Americans can benefit all of us.  A thirty year old working woman who today cannot afford the right preventative care may become a forty year old disabled woman tomorrow.  If she becomes eligible for social security benefits or other governmental programs at forty, she becomes a tax spender instead of a tax payer.

This woman could be dead at fifty from a cause that could have been easily and inexpensively prevented in her thirties. This of course stops her from being a tax spender, but also prevents her from being a mother.  This can mean that her children grow up to be less productive citizens than they would be otherwise.  The cost to her children cannot be measured, but there is an economic impact on our country that can be estimated.

In this regard, this is very different when compared to Medicare and Medicare Supplement mandates.  Medicare, for the most part, extends the lives of Americans who are not working.  Although this is an important goal, it extends the “tax spending” phase of the typical beneficiary.  As we improve the health of people in their seventies, we extend their lives and in so ding increase the amount of money we pay in Social Security.

The debate on Obama health care proposals and the proposals of others focuses on our moral obligations to those less fortunate.  This is a great motivator for many people.  However, even for those who would love to help, the idea of substantially increasing our taxes with no personal benefit is unpalatable.

I don’t claim to have the statistics associated with the above argument or the other pro and cons on universal healthcare.  However, there are benefits other then the warm and fuzzy ones that will offset the impact of the possibility that we will pay higher taxes with universal healthcare.