How is it not a quick fix? For starters, one of the main problems with health care in America is its lack of doctors and its price at doctor fees. America has more malpractice suits than any other country, which means that our doctors need to be heavily insured. The more our doctors need to spend, the more we need to spend. The problem with American healthcare system is not who is paying for it (private insurance agencies, or the government) because in the end the people paying for it are, well, the people. The real problem is becoming a loss in education (check out how the education cuts schools are taking. I know at Framingham State College they are about to cut the English Department by nearly two thirds). Less education means less high paying jobs. Less high paying jobs includes doctors. Universal Healthcare will not work unless America gets more doctors (if everyone has coverage, everyone is going to go--especially in situation where before they had decided not to: this means that some people may expect a doctor to treat their every cold, their every cut, and their every bruise. There will be those who abuse the system) and America cannot get more doctors unless it aids students in becoming doctors (and then protects its doctors from oftentimes ill-advised lawsuits).

Again, I will repeat my main point. A Universal Healthcare system will not aid this country's economic situation. It will not help the people. It will hurt them. The middle class will bear more weight (and taxation) upon their shoulders. The middle class now is already paying for the healthcare of illegal immigrants. I think to solve the problem with growing medical fees in this nation, a change from private to universal healthcare will not promote economic security (in fact, health insurance companies are pretty big companies employing thousands of people across the country--would switching to universal healthcare put them out of jobs?).

Universal healthcare is not a band-aid, so why should it be treated as such? It is just a change of structure, not a change to fix the economic and social crises of the nation.

Everyone keeps trying to have these one quick fixes of the social inequalities that exist (and are increasing) for the American people. One big stimilus check does not save a bad business. It is a bad business. One switch from private to universal healthcare does not fix the problem: that people cannot afford it because they are poor. Universal healthcare could actually increase the cost of healthcare for some individuals, particularly the middle class. So switching the healthcare system does not solve the problem, it only changes it. What the American people need to focus on is something to alter the actual social condition--to mediate, to relieve, and to solve the growing poverty rates (and to make America as economically equal as it is idealistically equal). What could do this? Changing the healthcare system? Maybe. But maybe not.