The Biggest Reason Why Americans Still Don’t have Universal Health Care?

The Biggest Reason Why Americans Still Don’t have Universal Health Care?

The universal health care is offered by the government in any country to its citizen regardless of their ability to pay the health care. It is arranged by the federal government to ensure all the people acquire the same quality of medical services. In the United States, the universal health care system are sometimes called as “Medicare for All”.

Compare to other 32 economically developed countries in the world, United States is a developed nation which still doesn’t have any universal health care system until now. In 2010, the US federal government had issued a new healthcare system well-known as Obamacare. Despite there are some similarity with universal health care, Obamacare program is actually different from universal health care.

What makes universal health care still cannot be implemented in the United States is something that far beyond funding or any kind of practical reasons. The United States itself is a land of peculiarity where racism issues still effect the political policies. It is worse when the racism issues prevent the citizens to acquire their basic right: universal healthcare for life.

In 1865, there is an early and first attempt by The Freedmen’s Bureau to provide a universal and free healthcare to a many group of residents in the United States. Unfortunately, some problems such as lack of funds and officers cause the program could not function like it ideally was designed. While the issues of politics of race also dominated the nation and causing the universal health care is barred in the United Stated.

The Racism Issues Barred Universal Health Care Being Implemented in the US

When most of economically developed nations or even developing nations have dealt with mixed races and the same human rights regardless of their color or any physical appearances, United States seem to stand still on their racism problems. Even federal government designed the federal health care policy to exclude black Americans, both explicitly and implicitly.

The real example of the disparity of act the federal government had taken to cope with this issue was very clear. The smallpox problem facing the black people in the Civil War and led black mortality rate higher than of whites. White leaders didn’t take any assistance seriously for the black people who were contaminated with smallpox in the late 1860s.

The leaders worried about the epidemics from black people infected their white communities. White communities also wanted that their slave (mostly from black people) to be healthy enough to return to their farm and domestic works. But, in the other hand, the white communities and their leader feared that healthy and free African-American could upend the hierarchy of racial.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first nation black female doctor, gave a rejoinder about the black extinction theory. This theory stated that blacks were so ill and the entire black race was going to extinct in the United States. One of the congressman even said that there were no ways to alter the inevitable fate of black people from extinction because of their inferior nature.

Rebecca, as a doctor who joined the Freedmen’s Bureau stated that many of the government politicians seem to forget about the fact that every ailment had a cause. The truth was, the government actually had the power to remove the causal factor of the ailment.

The disparity of act even occurred in the professional societies such as the American Medical Association. The American Medical Association still barred black medical professional like black doctors. While medical schools also still excluded black students and led them to build their own black medical colleges, Howard and Meharry.

Howard and Meharry medical colleges trained black people to become nurses and doctors. While their professional medical societies made an association called National Medical Association. In the 1950s, National Medical Association faced into direct conflict with American Medical Association(A.M.A) that consisted of white people only to oppose the idea of nationalized health plan.

In that year, National Medical Association that consisted of black medical professional proposed a federal health care system. While the A.M.A opposed the idea of federal health care system since the association thought that it was un-American and very socialist. The system also intervened the relationship between doctor and patient. While many white doctors still denied black patients.

Not only build own medical colleges, black people also began to initiate national community health care movement. This health care movement also included fund raising to build their own health facilities such as hospitals and health clinics. Built own health facilities such as hospitals and health clinics is very important since the ordinary health facilities seem to segregated black patients.

From these many inequities the black people have to face in the federal health care policy, many black people have to deal with larger health problems. The health problems including sicker lives that caused their mortality rate higher than that of white counterparts. This is the real reason of the black extinction theory, not because of their inevitable fate.

The black community health care movement initiated by black women worked to fund-raise in order to build black health facilities and educated black people communities about many things correlated with health quality such as sanitation, nutrition, disease and ailment prevention.

One of their most popular health program which drew national attention was National Negro Health Week.The National Negro Health Week made the nation more aware of racial health disparities. The idea of universal health care system being more popular since World Health Organization declared that health care is a basic of human right in 1948.

The discrimination and history of slavery in the United States have pushed the racial wealth and health quality gap. The United States is a unique land span in other part of the world. This land supposedly has a great opportunity if they get rid of their racial problems that rooted from hundreds of years before. This racial problem also barred the states to have universal health care system.

 

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