The Nexus

As the future of health care continues to be debated throughout political circles across the country, much of the media coverage has centered on the raving mobs decrying socialism and end-of-life counseling.

This focus has fueled tensions at town hall meetings across the country. The result is that the public disengages and renders health care as an issue far removed from the everyday life of a Westview student.

But the health care reform that is on the table is so basically linked to every American; it is hard to separate the Westview student from the reform.

In fact, there are really only two degrees of separation between health care reform and us.

To really understand how much a public option would affect everyone in the country in a positive way, we must understand what a public option is.

The public option is just as it sounds: an option. It means that people would have the opportunity to have their medical insurance provided by the government instead of by a private company.

As the reform stands now, what the public option would do is just open up another opportunity for people to get reasonable coverage. If you are happy with your current coverage, you get to keep it, if not you can switch to a government-run program. 

Many have lambasted the public option as a force that would wipe out competition, and force people to change their health care providers. But this concern is without basis. The government program would just force insurance companies to provide competitive prices.

By introducing a competitive rate, a public option would force the private health care companies to lower their current, ridiculously high prices.

Our system right now, which consists of private health care companies for those people who can afford it, is designed so that health care companies can overcharge through mutual overpricing.

This way they can introduce tricky loopholes in their coverage plans, barring people from getting the coverage they dearly need.

With a government option, health care companies would have a hard time maintaining high profits if they kept up such strategies.

But it may still seem unclear just how the public option directly affects us. But upon further quandary, it becomes clear.

Soon we will be thrust out of our homes into the world, left to fend for ourselves. We won’t have our families there providing all we need.

And the public option will help us. By lowering the prices for health care, it will make it so that you can better provide for yourself without having to worry as much about the price of your health.