The National Welfare

The United States is known as one of the greatest world powers: however it is held back by its weak healthcare system. As of 2010 the US healthcare system currently ranks the 37th best out of 190 countries. Before the introduction of the Affordable Care Ac in 2010, the united States had an individual insurance market. It was the responsibility of the individual or their employer, to take care of their healthcare costs. On top of this millions of people could be denied insurance by different agencies due to pre-existing claims. Healthcare was expensive, but the costs were nothing compared to the medical bills owed by an uninsured person. Universal healthcare is a basic right not a privilege. Everyone should be given the opportunity to have health insurance no matter his or her income. Isn’t this the principle of freedom and basic right what America was based on? On half of all bankruptcies in the United States are due to an inability to pay medical bills. These problems all pose a question and the answer Is Universal Healthcare. The federal government has the interest of all American citizens on its mind and universal healthcare is a perfect way of highlighting that fact. The Affordable Care act provides low cost healthcare to the previously uninsured and guarantees continued healthcare in the case of job loss. Many people are still opposed to this act. This new system of universal healthcare will lead to improvements within the lives of American Citizens. There are many

Leonard Peikoff believes that national healthcare is unethical and tramples on the individual “negative” rights of hard-working Americans. He makes a point of clearly defining what our “negative” rights are; they are our ‘unalienable, individual rights’ as Americans, in the context in which it was written in the Declaration of Independence, the right to “life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness”. According to Peikoff, “…all legitimate rights have one thing in common they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people.” (Peikoff 2); it is this right to action (pursuit) which Peikoff attributes to the success

Changes within the welfare system as a result of policy shifts and by new thinking, more generally in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have had many methods, but the one that seemed most important, was that welfare recipients were required to do much more to justify their income support payments than before. The foundation of this new idea is that income support programs should allow individuals to maximise their participation in work. Due to the general shift in welfare administration, the number of activity test requirements an individual in Australia must meet in order to receive unemployment benefits, has expanded significantly since the early 1990s. This complex, overly bureaucratic process means that disadvantaged individuals cannot access the income support payments they require.

The welfare system first came into action during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployed citizens needed federal assistance to escape the reality of severe poverty. The welfare system supplies families with services such as: food stamps, medicaid, and housing among others. The welfare system has played a vital role in the US, in controlling the amount of poverty to a certain level. Sadly, the system has been abused and taken for granted by citizens across the country. The welfare system was previously controlled by the federal government until 1996; the federal government handed over the responsibility to the states in hope of reducing welfare abuse. However, this change has not prevented folks from scamming the system. The

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” If these words are true then why should we segregate one another by a precondition such as Universal Health care? A system that should allow residents of a specific region the opportunity to have healthcare coverage. This paper argues stipulations that all residents should be given the opportunities stated in the founding documents as well as the right to suitable healthcare, economic productivity and, a base for a just nation. In 2014 according to the US Census Bureau 33 million people in the United States which equates to 10.4% did not have health insurance. Thus, possibly assisting with the inability to provide residents with lifesaving treatments and accurate care for those in dire need but were unable to receive certain previsions due to not having health care.

“Whenever the power that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the protection of our properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many”

In America today, just over ten million people are on unemployment insurance, one hundred and ten million people are on welfare, and the total government spending annually is around one hundred and thirty billion dollars (Welfare Statistics). The welfare state is a political system based on the proposition that the government has the individual responsibility to ensure that the minimum standard of living is met for all citizens. Specifically, in the matters of health care, public education, employment, and social security, the welfare state assumes all responsibility. According to John Rawls, “In a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice“(Rawls). In the 1840s, Otto Von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of Germany, was the father of the modern welfare state. He built the program to win over the support of the working middle class in Germany and ultimately reduce the outflow of immigrants to the U.S., where welfare did not exist (Welfare State). In the United States, not all companies provided workers with benefits, thus the workers appealed to the government, giving rise to the first form of welfare capitalism.

Imagine a young girl, she is extremely sick, but there is an easy cure. However, this beloved daughter and sister will slip the thread that has been holding her and leave her family to grieve; leave her younger sister immovable from her bedside; leave her distraught mother unable to recover. This is all because the family couldn’t afford her health; all because people are too stingy to even glance at those in need. Even though some people can’t afford healthcare, that doesn’t make them any less deserving of it. Therefore, those who can afford it should support the effort to make it available for all. Furthermore, a free health care tax wouldn’t just be good for our conscience. A free health care tax would ultimately be better for the economy;

No Professor Tucker, I do not think it contradicts at all. :-) My first sentence is stating that the government should offer optional health coverage for those that are unable to afford it otherwise. Just as things like Pell Grants are optional for those that would like to take advantage of higher education they would not have otherwise been able to afford, I feel similar things should be in place regarding health care. Not a federal government mandate for

What would happen if the government made changes to the welfare system? There are approximately 110,489,000 of Americans on welfare. Many people benefit from what the system has to offer: food stamps, housing, health insurance, day care, and unemployment. Taxpayers often argue that the individuals who benefit from the system, abuse the system; however, this is not entirely true. Many of the people who receive benefits really and truly need the help. Even though some people believe welfare should be reformed, welfare should not be reformed because 40% of single mothers are poor, some elderly people do not have a support system, and college students can not afford to take extra loans.

When the United States of America was first being formed in the late 18th century, the founding fathers were faced with evaluating what it meant to be a good government. They knew they wanted to base it on liberty, equality, and representation, but the process and purpose of the government is what they debated on. In president Thomas Jefferson's Inaugural Address, he said that "a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." I agree with his point of view because the core purpose of government is to make sure other people and the government itself do not infringe upon the rights and freedoms of any person.

Buchanan’s argument that healthcare is not a right is based on the idea that healthcare needs vary amongst persons and populations and one cannot unnecessarily be coerced by the government to help others. But the premise of the libertarian or individualist argument against the right to healthcare seems to rest on faulty ground. Opposing healthcare as a right based on the premise that only negative rights can be true and legitimate denies the possibility that negative rights can themselves sometimes infringe on others or involve a redistribution of wealth. If the problem of healthcare can

In addition to the difficulty of changing the views of the United States citizens, many people believe that becoming a welfare state will lead the United States to become more vulnerable. For example, these people believe that welfare states help with short-term problems, but do not help any citizens in the long run. If the United States were to become a welfare state, then more people would be relying on money from the government. If a high number of people were to solely rely on the government, then there would be less money for those who actually need welfare programs will have less money provided. People also argue that welfare states encourage economic inactivity.

Health care is an essential service "like education, clean water and air and protection from crime, all of which we already acknowledge are public responsibilities." Never mind that many Americans do not believe that public agencies are in fact providing adequate schooling, pollution control, and crime prevention. If we think health care is a right, then we should be appalled that the United States is the only western democracy whose citizens do not have universal access to health care. If you think health care is a commodity, then you should accept the fact that some of those without coverage will end up at the mercy of their hospital when the medical bills come due. Realizing that there is no free lunch when it comes to health care. That is why health care should be rationed by government regulations.

The idea behind the welfare state was to relieve poverty, reduce inequality, and achieve greater