Today’s Daily Prompt seems to be suspiciously political based. If you’ve read my blog before you know I don’t really ‘chat’ about politics, so I’ll keep this short. The question: Is access to medical care something that governments should provide, or is it better left to the private sector? Are their drawbacks to your choice?
As a designer, I chuckled
Perhaps this situation could be treated like the right to an attorney. If you are in trouble you have the right to an attorney. You can, however, waive that right. Couldn’t healthcare be the same? As a citizen the government would give you access to medical care. However, if you didn’t like the services provided by what the government supplies you could waive the government supplied care and go your own way and be covered by someone in the private sector. I’m sure there are drawbacks to that plan, such as only certain things/doctors being in the private sectors realm of coverage, limiting who you can go to. However, maybe the coverage is more complete than what would be supplied by the government. Taxes would go up to pay for the coverage. For a capitalist society that is a very bad thing. However it does work for some countries. People in Sweden, for example, devote around 50% of their income to taxes. However the benefits far out-way the cost. In the health sector alone, children under 18 get free dental and medical coverage, a family gets over a year of maternity leave, divided between the parents any way they choose, and they also a child allowance (not sure what that is, but it sounds like they receive 2,000/child/year). That doesn’t even take into account unemployment, elderly care or pensions. Also through this tax Sweden is one of the few countries who fulfill their promise (to the UN) of financial aid for third world countries. Clearly it works for them in spades.
Q the Adult 