I Will Argue That The Political Aspect of The American Healthcare Has Made It Such a Topical Debate in American Society Today

I will argue that the political aspect of the American healthcare has made it such a topical debate in American society today. “Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other”[1]. Although I acknowledge that there are historical, cultural, philosophical and social economic aspects, nevertheless I am going to focus on the political aspect that in my opinion is most important.

To begin with we have to hold this notion in our minds that politics has the notion of struggle attached to it. We need only look at events in history such as the Civil Rights Movement and the gaining of rights for woman to vote accentuates this notion of struggle and this is seen through the American Healthcare debate where there is struggle for change. George Orwell highlighted this in his quote when he stated, “All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way”. According to Orwell, “People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”[2]. We are able to see that there is essentially the notion that there will be conflicting view points that we exacerbate the debate of American Healthcare to ensure that their individual needs are met.

In order to understand why the healthcare debate has become so entrenched in the minds of Americans today, we will need to take a closer look at the word culture. Culture is said to include “the symbols, images, meanings, habitual comportments, stories and so on, through which people express their experience and communicate with one another”[3]. Here we can see that there is a bringing together of people under the American way of life, “an intergenerational community, more or less institutionally complete, occupying a given territory or homeland, sharing a distinct language and history” [4].

There are two concepts that need to be addressed to understand the complexities and the prevalence of this debate in the minds of the American people, and these are the concepts of Capitalism and Liberal Democracy. Where as Capitalism policy is not just the economic aspect of doing the physical business transactions in order to make a profit, but is also a way of thinking that has adopted and infiltrated its ways into American culture. Capitalists also believe in a free market where the individual being freely able to pursue his own interests, without the regulation mechanisms set up by government, is the only way that society can flourish. There is also this dependence on productive labor. According to this theory humans are needed to produce more products that can be sold to generate a profit. “Labor also becomes “efficient”, to the point where it becomes defined by its “productivity”; under capitalism individuals’ productivity increases through “the division of labor,” which divides productive labor into its smallest components” [5], which shows this great notion of wanting to create wealth. This way of thinking was prevalent during the Cold War where there was a conflict clash of ideology between the United States and the Soviet Union that practiced Communism. In a brief look at Communism we see a struggle between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat classes. This was described in The Communist Manifesto written by Marx and Engles, whose aim was to end the abuse of the Proletariat at the hands of the Bourgeoisie ruling class. Communism highlights a system of government where the state runs the economy, going against the lassiez-faire attitude of Capitalism, and that a single party holds all the power, claiming to make progress to elevate a high social order where all goods are shared by the people. If we relate this to the Healthcare debate we are able to see that there are individuals that want to keep this individualistic culture going. “Capitalism rewards financial success and, obviously, health insurance companies that are driven to maximize their profits can most easily do so by compromising the quality of their service, selectively choosing whom to insure, and finding ways to limit or deny claims”[6].