One very unfortunate thing that is becoming painfully clear is that a lot of people apparently don’t know what “universal healthcare” actually means. Many, possibly even most people in the United States, at least according to my own experiences, think a universal healthcare system is either one that is run by the government or one that is paid for by the government. Neither of these are correct. Universal healthcare is not government healthcare, and in fact does not necessarily have anything to do with the government.
When the word “universal” is used to describe something, it simply means that it applies to everyone. It is something that everyone has or something that everyone is required to have. That’s it.
One example of a universal insurance system is auto insurance. Most states in the United States require that you have some kind of auto insurance if you drive a car. It is mandatory in those states. The fact that everyone must have it makes it universal. But remember, even though you have to have auto insurance if your drive, the government has nothing to do with it. You don’t buy your auto insurance policy from the government, and the government doesn’t fix your car if you get into an accident. You buy your insurance from a company, and you have a company fix your car. There is no government involvement, but it is still universal insurance because it is required for everyone.
Similarly, if universal health insurance existed in the United States, all that would mean is that everyone would be required to have health insurance of some kind. You could choose to have a small, basic policy, or you could have a much bigger, more expensive policy that covers absolutely everything. You would still have that choice, just like you do when you are deciding what kind of auto insurance policy to have, but you would have to have something. You would also continue to purchase your health insurance policy from a company, and you would continue to be treated by a privately practicing doctor. Simply enacting universal health insurance would not have any effect on any of that, by definition. It would just mean that everyone would have to have health insurance, rather than whatever percentage of people have it today.
It is true that if something like a government run public option to provide health insurance to people were enacted, it would mean that the government would get involved in the health insurance industry. However, it is important to realize that a public option is not the same thing as universal health insurance. The idea of universal health insurance refers to the number of people it covers, whereas a public (or private) option refers to the method in which insurance is provided. They are two separate concepts which do not necessarily go together. They can, but they don’t have to. So, you can have universal health insurance without a government run health insurance option, or you can have public option without having universal coverage. Or, you can also have both or neither of them. The point is that the number of people covered has no relationship to the way people are covered.
Universal healthcare is not the same as government healthcare. Many people get them confused or think that they are the same thing, but they are not. Take note of the difference and think about each of them separately as the distinct concepts that they are.
Tags: government healthcare, health insurance, healthcare, public option, universal healthcare
