Should Medicare be Changed?
Dating back to the 1960s, Medicare, a social insurance program, has presented America’s elderly and disabled populations with health benefits for nearly six decades. As expressed in “Understanding Social Insurance: Fairness, Affordability, and the ‘Modernization’ of Social Security and Medicare”, much debate surrounds the basic controversy of whether the structure of Medicare requires change. Undoubtedly, Medicare needs to be left to function in order to offer benefits and hope to those across the United States.
For many the idea of transforming Medicare from its core component of availability for all without individual risk is ideal. These economists view changes within Medicare as a way to reward the individual with personal choice and increased marketization (Marmor and Mashaw 2006). But what they are deceitfully hiding is that such changes would shake the core of Medicare, shattering its fundamental basis and leaving vast populations of people to sort through healthcare decisions that they have not been adequately informed to make, thus creating inadequate social insurance protection (Marmor and Mashaw 2006).
Social insurance, which includes Medicare in its current state, is desirable because it gives a concept of protection and equality to the elderly and disabled populations throughout the United States. Given that this is a key feature of all advanced industrial societies (Marmor and Mashaw 2006), it seems that altering such social insurance programs would make Americans devoid of a protection that has assisted America’s industrial capitalism (Marmor and Mashaw 2006). Ironically, it seems that those who want to change what has worked for decades are failing to fully consider the ramifications of changing one of the key structures in a capitalistic society; they are willing instead to adopt new approaches that tend to take care of the rich and neglect the rest. Medicare has been successful for decades; therefore, what is working should not be changed.
What is the author’s opinion regarding Medicare?
