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Why All Children Should Be Guaranteed Free Healthcare
Yesterday I had to take my daugher to the ER, because she’s had a fever for longer than is typical when children catch a cold. A week ago she took a covid-19 test which came back negative so we knew it was something else. She was admitted and given her own room with an extra bed so that I could stay with her. They ran a number of tests including blood work, ultrasound, and lung X-ray, and she was seen by a number of nurses and doctors. They fed us both, and did everything they could to make us as comfortable as circumstances would allow.
“They’re certainly spending a lot of resources on us,” I thought to myself. “I wonder how much all of this will cost?” We don’t have private health insurance. Fortunately though, we live in a first world country which guarantees free healthcare for all children, so we won’t be billed at all for this — we’ve already paid for it through our taxes. It’s a very efficient system where doctors don’t have to argue with insurers about what kind of treatments they should provide. Patients don’t have to pay the salaries of insurers whose job it is to try to find a loophole that enables them to deny payment rather than to use their medical expertise to help people. In our system, everybody in the helathcare industry works for the patient.
