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| USA: Corporate controlled Insurance sucks |
The fact that the US isn’t among
the countries with universal healthcare and free college
has been a topic of many heated political debates and complaints,
especially among the Millennials faced with the prospect of repaying
their student loans well into their adulthood. If they have a misfortune
of getting hit with a major hospital bill as well, declaring a
bankruptcy is often the only solution.
Universal
healthcare is something that is available in a vast number of countries
across the globe. While the programs offered by each government varies
from nation to nation, they’re all based on the same concept – offering
access to free healthcare to everyone, old or young. Most often than
not, insurance is offered freely for the underaged and the elderly,
while those in the working force have a small portion of their paycheck
directed to the national fund sustaining this system.
Free education is something that is widely encountered across the globe,
although college isn’t always included on the list. Many countries
offer a number of free university seats while others subsidize them.
Many argue that this type of education,
just like universal healthcare, isn’t actually free since it is funded
by the government, who in turn gathers the cash by taxing people’s
paychecks and businesses.
Basically
that is an argument used in the US which in reality does not fly,
because the end result in countries which do provide this service is
offering everyone
access to what they need, be it education that will provide them with a
better future without having to spend half of their lives paying back
the student loans or getting the healthcare they need.
Across the globe, there are quite a lot of
countries that offer free healthcare,
from the Americas, Asia, although the most are from Europe where this
seems to be the way to go when it comes to this important issue.
Many European (EU) countries regard
free education also as an investment to the economy. There is skilled
workforce available on the free labor market. The opposite solution
could be for example that every industry would educate their own work
force starting from day one.
Capitalism or socialism doesn’t define who must pay the education: the society, the industry or the individual.
It’s
the same with the healthcare: there isn’t any rule that tells that
either the society, the employer or the individual should be the one who
pays for the health care. It could be also so that every industry
should build their own hospitals and educate their own doctors - or so
that the people, the work force, do it together. But it can also be
regarded as a state’s investment in the economy so that the free work
force remains available and capable on the market.
These
investments by the state are comparable with other investments in the
infrastructure and the functionality of the society. The state offers
some base for the free economy to thrive, like roads, security and so
on.
Socialism
is so abused and so
polymorphic concept that it’s hard to define simply. But in the basic
concept of socialism is about how the economic power is divided
between the capital and the labor.
It certainly has nothing to do with communism, which unfortunately many right-wing conservatives like to call socialism.
.
The ultimate goal is a society
that has stopped the domination of capital over the labor and where the
labor has taken the domination on the production. This doesn’t
necessarily mean that the state should own everything.
Both of these functions can also be shared in different ways as long as it benefits the citizens and the country as a whole.
In
America the concept has become totally lopsided over the years. Today
about 3 % of the US population controls all the wealth in the country,
with corporations basically influencing all the decision making
processes of the political establishment.
If not corrected soon, it will have disastrous consequences for America.
EU-Digest
