America is a capitalist nation as are its people, many who are in debt and are not satisfied with their current salary. Many of the liberals of the U.S. would kill for healthcare however do not see the economic reprocussions of healthcare. Heres a potential story of what would happen:
John works as a carpenter for a labor union in Philadelphia. Carpentry can get dangerous and his healthcare plan covers next to nothing. The good thing for John is the U.S. just passed Obamacare and there is unified healthcare now in effect up and running. John has the best health care he has ever had. John gets his pay check which already gets a portion taken out for social security, retirement, and medicare. John and the other workers noticed there is quite a larger portion taken out of their check the reason is the new health care plan. The same thing occurs with every other worker in America, the government workers would be okay because they recieve cost of living increases except Barack Obama canceled cost of living increases this year 2011. The workers in the unions at supermarkets protest for minimum wage increases the governors of U.S. all agree to make up for the price of health care. The supermarket corps can not afford to pay everyone the new rate of minimum wage and lay off part of the staff. Less money gets put into the economy and the government has to pay out unemployment to all the laid off employees which leads to a triple dip recession. We may not have any money in with the heatlhcare plan or be able to pay off debts but will have our health and the millions of people not paying for it will have theirs too and thats good I guess. Now is not the time for health care ten, twenty years down the road when the debt is paid is when we should start talking about healthcare not now we can't afford it!
As a thought exercise, I agree it is important to consider the obvious and not so obvious consequences of policy. I am sure when others in the class read this they will have a lot of questions/comments.
ReplyDeleteDo you have a second post on healthcare?
I agree completely with your last sentence. Although health care is a huge concern, there are many bigger problems that the US has to focus on! It would be great if they could focus on all of them at once, but they can't. So why not pay off debt and then focus on fixing the health care situation? I also liked your little story. Gives a clear picture of what happens to people's money when they get their pay check. It's not fair!
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