Making Our Socialized Medicine Cheaper

In our discussion of medical care for the Latino community, the arguments always circled back to cost. Clearly, we would like to be able to treat everyone who has an illness, but at the end of the day we have more medical care available than our society can afford. So many argue that we cannot give healthcare to everyone (i.e. middle to low income individuals and immigrants) because it would simply cost too much. However, almost invariably, these discussions neglect the fact that we already treat everyone despite health insurance status-- the federal law under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires that hospitals stabilize individuals in the emergency room.

This law coupled with the widespread lack of insurance or under-coverage has led to record-high emergency room visits--individuals without money or insurance are using them as primary care. However, by the time an illness justifies the emergency room, it has likely progressed to a very difficult and expensive state. So not only do tax-payers already pay for "socialized" medicine, they pay for an extremely expensive, morally questionable version of it. The discussion needs to change from whether or not we should pay for government-funded healthcare to a cost-benefit analysis of not switching to systems that enable relatively inexpensive preventative care.