Why YOU should care about health care

If you’re still reading this article, kudos.

A lot of 18- to 22-year-old college students already have most of their brain space consumed with issues more apropos to their age group — that WRIT 340 paper due tomorrow that you haven’t started, which frats are throwing parties this coming weekend or how you’re possibly going to afford those tickets to Coachella 2017.

This is not to claim that only petty, superficial issues cross our adolescent minds, but there is something to say for worrying about the things that most directly influence your life at the time. College, for many young adults, is a time (perhaps the last time) where we are the most carefree from those big, weighty “adult” issues like tax returns, income inequality and health care reform.

If you had tried to talk to me a year ago about health care I would have rolled my eyes and quickly changed the subject to Instagram, Oscar-worthy movies or the latest fad in fashion before getting caught in the monotony of political policies.

But after my own serious health scare, a riveting documentary by Michael Moore and, believe it or not, a WRIT 150 paper assignment, I found myself at possibly one of the last real bookstores left, frantically searching for books on the American health care system.

As I sat in an over-air conditioned Starbucks for the three hours reading T.R. Reid’s The Healing of America: A Global Quest For Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, what I found shocked and riveted me and I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

I’ll lay it out for you as I understand it.

You may or may not remember President Harry Truman (perhaps from AP US History if you didn’t block out that time of your life). He was the first person to propose national health insurance, providing health coverage for all Americans. This idea didn’t really come to the forefront until 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson established the Medicare program, which provides health care for many low-income Americans who would otherwise not have any health care. This was definitely a milestone in American history, but the system still wasn’t great and there was no universal coverage.

It wasn’t until President Barack Obama came around just a few years ago that we really saw another attempt to change the system. Public Law 111-148: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or as many refer to it, “Obamacare” was meant to expand coverage, increase the pay of primary care doctors and ultimately slow the growth of medical costs.

Perhaps it is because I have learned to be skeptical and cynical of many things in my teenage years, but the problems that still plague our health care system seem extraordinary. While the law has no doubt done a lot of good for a lot of people, there is still a plethora of issues with our health care system that must be addressed immediately.

As of 2010, 50 million Americans were uninsured. While many are now covered under “Obamacare,” millions of Americans belonging to low-income groups (especially racial minorities) remain uninsured today. This means that if they have an aching back or stomach, many forgo visiting a doctor simply to avoid the wildly high medical bills.

Plus, even while many more people are insured, the cost of insurance is skyrocketing.

The American health care system is by far the most costly system in the world and the costs are in exchange for subpar quality in many areas of the country, leaving millions of Americans without health insurance.

Globally, America is ranked No. 37, just above Slovenia, in health care systems. There are so many more issues on this subject that candidates are addressing it right now as the 2016 election approaches — the fact that insurance companies are “profit making,” that people get denied coverage for necessary surgeries every day, that the health care industry is killing people by not paying for procedures and medications.

This issue is a very complicated one and I still don’t even know a quarter of the necessary information, but I think it’s an important topic for everyone to understand a bit about. I think a lot of teenagers don’t bother with complicated issues because it doesn’t directly affect them, takes far too much effort to fully comprehend or they feel like even if they did understand there’s nothing they can really do about it anyways or maybe all of the above. I know I’ve felt all of the above reasons many a time.

An issue like health care can seem especially unimportant to many college kids because so many teenagers think they are invincible. But unless you’ve gone through a health crisis, and even then, most students are covered under their parents’ health care plan, it never crosses their minds that they might get sick and need care one day.

Even when we hear stories of kids getting in car accidents or getting sick or even going to the hospital for a night, we don’t believe that it could happen to us. We often live our lives recklessly, moment by moment, carefree. I think in so many ways this is a beautiful thing about youth that you can’t get back, but health is something that affects everyone every day whether you realize it or not.

While health care reform may seem like a snooze fest that doesn’t directly affect you right now (and hopefully it never really has to), it most definitely affects someone you know and probably someone you care about. There are millions of people out there, including people you know personally or have met, that have to live in fear of getting sick because they have no guarantee that they will receive quality medical care. Others are still trying to pay bills that are keeping them alive and well.

So crack open a few books on health care reform, spend some time on Google and check out the candidates’ platforms on health care. Health care is too important an issue to push aside due to its complexity and, maybe as the bright youth of America, we could be the ones to help push it toward a real and lasting reformation.