Healthcare: Right vs. Responsibility - Civis

American citizens are required to get insurance for their cars. Because cars are important. 

In certain residential areas located adjacent to washes or rivers, citizens are required to get flood insurance. Because our homes are important. 

Why aren't we insured as a people; Aren't we important?

Of course, that's a foolish question. It's quite obvious that health insurance is essential. The question is how to obtain it. The Federal Government is simply the best possible source for this service. Specially, a public option.  

For clarification, it is a right in that everyone deserves to be able to purchase or buy into an organized system of healthcare; not in that everyone should get it for free. 

 Healthcare transcends being some program offered by massive conglomerates. On a local, human level, it is the individual gifts from doctors and nurses to patients. My foremost piece of evidence in favor of a government option is the overhead (administrative) costs for such corporations. The public option, ideally, will look like Medicare, but offered to anyone. Medicare has an overhead cost of 2-3%, even the more modest calculations say 5%. But the average corporate insurer has an overhead rate of roughly 20%. That means 20 cents of every dollar given to these companies is used for administrative costs, which cannot be attributed to any specific business activity. It's the ultimate manifestation of pork and unnecessary spending. 

My favorite analogy for the public option is the U. S. Postal Service. It offers a relatively efficient product at a really low rate for anybody. It keeps its competition, U. P. S. and Fedex, from declining in efficiency. The analogy fails when one considers that the U. S. P. S. operates at a deficit, which the public option won't do. Enough people will pay directly into it, some of the Department of Defenses budget can be reallocated properly, and as the public option negotiates lower prices for certain services, prices will go down. 

And that's important, Americans spend the most on healthcare; it's 16% of our G. D. P. Yet somehow we can't even make it into the top ten worldwide. Healthcare can be affordable; the Government can moderate this appropriately. This is a right. 

-Civis