America needs health care reform

The United States health care system is far behind other developed countries and our political system is keeping it stifled.

In 2010, the World Health Organization published a report quantifying the importance of universal health care and what countries can do to achieve it.

Other world leaders and the leading health authority in the world are advocating for a publicly funded health care system in order to make health care more accessible. So why is the United States of America, a nation full of citizens ripe with pride about being the greatest country in the world, one of the only first-world countries that does not have a modern health care system?

Why are we holding onto a system that inflates the cost of medical care and forwards that charge, by way of mountainous premiums, to citizens and companies? Other countries have lower overall mortality, premature death, death amenable to health care and disease burden, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that focuses on world health issues.

Medical companies use that wealth to lobby against common sense healthcare reform.

OpenSecrets.org compiled information from the Federal Election Commission that was released in September. It found that members of the U.S. House of Representatives received more than $13 million during the 2017-18 election cycle. Members of the U.S. Senate received more than $5 million. That is an $18 million bipartisan investment.These are significant contributions to campaigning politicians who now owe a financial obligation to vote against health care reform bills that would harm the corporation’s bottom line.

The result of this system is what citizens in this country are experiencing now: rising health care costs and insurance premiums that hurt the middle class and price out low socioeconomic populations, who are then punished further through income tax penalties if they could not afford any of their health care options.

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Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Campus Times Editorial Board.

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