In the upcoming presidential election, in which many seniors and even some juniors will be able to vote, one of the biggest debates is over whether Healthcare should be free and how to make it happen.

This begs the question of who is going to pay for your deadly disease? Or your check-up, or x-ray? Many high schoolers today look at Healthcare and just blow it off as some issue that doesn’t pertain to them. At least, that’s how I felt. When I first heard of Healthcare I thought it was this boring and insignificant issue that was taken care of by my parents, but when I was forced to read an article on it for an essay I was writing, I realized that it was something I needed to be worried about. The decisions that we make today in life and in voting determines whether ten years from now we will be paying thousands of dollars a year on Health insurance.

Healthcare: should it be free or should people have to pay? Well, in order to answer that question I thought it was important to find out what exactly Healthcare is. Healthcare is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preserving of mental and physical well-being through services offered by health professionals. If you have ever seen or heard of Medicare or Blue Cross, that would be your Healthcare coverage.

Currently, Americans spend more on Healthcare than on both food and housing combined, and over 40 million people do not even have Healthcare coverage.

Healthcare should be free. People who are against free healthcare believe that it is an impossible task mainly because the American government has not proved thoroughly successful or efficient in many of its regulated policies. (i.e. social security, department of education). There is a lack of trust in the government to take on something as big and complicated as Healthcare.

I have to disagree. Canada, Cuba, and some European states provide free Healthcare for all of their citizens and most of the countries that support it have been successful in maintaining it. It is possible.

Free Healthcare would eliminate all that annoying and unneeded paperwork, keep doctors focused on treating their patients, and encourage citizens to go to the doctor. If there was free Healthcare then every time you went to the doctor, you would not have to spend all that time filling out paper work because, ideally, there would be a centralized data base which would hold all of your information. It would be easier because citizens would be able to go to any hospital, not just the ones that have their paperwork.

Many doctors are constantly worried about malpractice lawsuits and insurance procedures, but if Healthcare were free then it would leave doctors free to focus more on treating the patient rather than worrying about whether there’s proof of insurance.

If health insurance were free then citizens would not have to feel intimidated by going to the hospital because they have no money. Therefore, more diseases could be caught and diagnosed early on, preventing the spread of many infectious diseases.

Healthcare is an important issue to know about because very soon this responsibility will fall into our hands. Typically, it isn’t mandatory to pay for Healthcare until six months after one has graduated from college. If one does not attend college, or at least full time college, then at age 21 they would have to pay for Healthcare. That’s only 4 years from now if you’re seventeen. Think high school went by fast? Those four years will go by faster.

Basically, we do need to care. Our votes and ideas will and can be the difference between saving a life and treating a homeless child with cancer. It’s our world and we have the power to change it.