With flu season in full swing, people are doing everything they can to avoid getting sick. Everyone has their own situations, and often times, many people can’t afford to get sick. There are bills to pay, children to feed, relatives to care for, but for others like myself, I can’t get sick because I may not be able to receive treatment.
When factors like employment benefits or lack of parental health plans come in to play, students may find themselves at the mercy of illnesses running rampant. According to a June 2017 poll by Agile Health Insurance, 72 percent of college and graduate students had trouble finding affordable insurance. While it has been shown that through the creation of programs like ObamaCare, percentages of uninsured college students has dropped to 8.7 percent as of 2016, some have still struggled with finding the right, affordable match for health care insurance.
With this comes the idea of universal health care, which is not used in the United States. Through the use of universal health care, no one is denied treatment or consultation because of their inability to pay or lack of health insurance. On the other hand, people worry about impending socialist America.
In a society where you get what you pay for, it can be terrifying being on the low end where you can’t pay, and thus could even lose your life or be in debt up to your eyeballs for a basic medical bill, thanks to the flu.
If health care should become more accessible with the inclusion of universal healthcare, perhaps people wouldn’t have to fear financial decrepitude, impending poverty and sometimes death. Those in fear of socialism could be put at bay by faster treatment options being made ready to those with better, private health care should they be able to afford it. Perhaps mending both ideas of our current system could protect those who can afford health care, while also including those with little to no ability to pay as well, and then everyone could be content.
Although merely a suggestible idea, we have to start somewhere, as someone coming in to work or school with the flu instead of staying home could be disastrous currently for someone like me, someone who can’t afford a doctor’s visit, let alone the medicine that follows.
