Health Care for the

Nations
Political Science 101
Gavin Plaizier

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In a world with an ever increasing desire to be heard as individuals and as a group, the ideology
of liberalism becomes increasingly more popular throughout many states in the world . The values
associated with liberalism have been around in history for much of our political history. However, the
term Liberalism is much newer and came into common usage in the 19 th century (Garner, pg112).
Liberalism is difficult to define, but in a basic sense, liberalism is liberty, tolerance, and individualism.
Liberalism is the freedom to equal opportunity and there are two common ways to view liberalism;
classical liberalism and new or reformed liberalism. Through this paper I will go over the key points of
the two different types of liberalism. While doing so, I will also compare them to healthcare around the
world. How different states handle their health care laws in relation to their views on liberalism.
The first type of Liberalism we will look over is the classical liberalism. In Garners book
introduction to politics he defines classical liberalism as follows Classical liberal tradition emphasizes
negative liberty. Freedom is about removing external constraints (Garner, pg114). What Garner means
by saying that, is in order to have freedom under the classical view of liberalism there needs to be nothing
holding people back from reaching their opportunities. To look at it from an extreme point of view it
would mean that there would be no Government involvement, and the only thing the state would do is
provide protection. To connect that with health care, it would be very similar to the health care that the
U.S has historically had.
Before recent laws that have been passed trying to increase the Governments involvement in
health care, the United States health care was very much based on an individuals ability, or wants to get
health care. In the United States there were very few ways to obtain health care. If as an individual you
were over a certain age you could qualify for Medicare, which was provided for by the government. Or
Medicaid was also provided by the government if your salary was under a certain amount. After that the
only two options were to get a job that would provide a health care plan. Then depending on your
employer and the plan you signed up for it would determine what things the insurance would cover, and
how much it would cost to you, if anything. Then finally if you had an employer that did not provide

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health care, and you made too much for Medicaid or were too young for Medicare, you could seek out an
insurance company yourself. This option can be extremely costly and in some situations impossible.
There were some people that insurance companies would not insure, because the person seeking
insurance would be too big of a financial risk for the insurance company, due to the patients possible
preexisting conditions.
Even after these new laws dealing with health care have come into play, America still remains a
great example of a more moderate Classic liberal state. The government plays a minimal role in peoples
lives concerning health care, and whether or not this is the best route to take or not remains debated.
The next form of liberalism is new or reformed liberalism. Garner explains The new liberal
tradition emphasizes positive freedom, whereby the state can remove obstacles to freedom. (Garner, pg
114). To expand on what Garners point is, new liberalism has the state interact closer with the people it
governs. The state tries to enact laws in order to provide a more equal chance for opportunity.
The extreme of new liberalism would be called socialism. In short socialism is where the
government has a much more involved role. A socialist government would not only enact laws to create
and equal opportunity but would work to create the same outcome, thereby trying to make the population
work together for the good of the whole.
With regards to health care in a socialist government we can look at some of the European
countries, or Japan that have adopted a socialist health care system. Health care is completely run by the
government and is paid for in large part by taxes. Everyone in the socialist state would have access to
health care and everyone would help pay for it. In Japan for instance everyone is required to pay for
health care along with employers. Employers have to pay more than half of the cost of insurance that
there employees would pay (PBS). Also by law every citizen in japan is required to health insurance and
those that cant afford insurance, or are unemployed are covered by the government. The way the system
is set up is explained simply by PBS Japan uses a "social insurance" system in which all citizens are

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required to have health insurance, either through their work or purchased from a nonprofit, communitybased plan. Those who can't afford the premiums receive public assistance. Most health insurance is
private; doctors and almost all hospitals are in the private sector. (PBS)
In the new liberal ideology health care would not be completely run by the government, nor
would it be entirely up to the individual to obtain health care. What a new liberalism would strive to do is
create opportunities for health care to be accessible to all, in a fair and equal way without stepping in
completely. As the new health care laws (A.K.A Obama care) have been coming into play I have seen
more of a new liberalistic ideology. These new laws are working to ensure that everyone has health care,
in some instances by providing it with tax payer dollars for those that cannot obtain it for themselves. At
the same time allowing insurance providers to continue to sell their coverage policies at mostly their own
discretion. I say mostly because these new laws are trying to make it illegal for an insurance company to
deny a patient coverage because of a preexisting condition that the patient has.
There is so much happening with these new health care laws, and it is making a big stir in
America. There are those that are extremely happy that they can finally be covered with insurance. While
on the other hand there are those that oppose it for various reasons, including not wanting to pay for other
people to have health care and a desire for less involvement from the government.
For me personally I lean more toward classical liberalism in most political issues, but I do find
myself leaning more toward the new liberalism ideology in regards to health care. Although you can
never make everyone happy I do believe that it is possible to find a way for people that differ in their
ideologies to come together and find a way to coexist. There are ways to leave health care in the hands of
the people while at the same time being monitored by the government to ensure a monopoly does not
form. All while making sure that all people have access to health care, and even allowing the insurance
companies to still compete for business. For instance Germanys health care system is similar to Japans
But unlike the Japanese, who get insurance from work or are assigned to a community fund, Germans

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are free to buy their insurance from one of more than 200 private, nonprofit "sickness funds." As in Japan,
the poor receive public assistance to pay their premiums. (PBS). In Germanys system the providers for
the sickness funds are paid based on the amount of people that enroll in their services. That way everyone
still gets healthcare, and there are still privately run companies that compete for business by trying to
provide the best customer service. I feel like that is a win, win for everyone.
With the world growing and changing it is important to make sure that we arent growing so fast
that we lose people in the process of our growth. And to really ensure continued growth I feel that there
needs to be competition between people to better ourselves. It is good that people in the world have
different views; thats how we grow and improve ourselves. The real trick is finding a way that is
beneficial to the largest amount of people and being humble enough to admit that your idea is not always
the best option.

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Works Cited

Garner, R. (2009). Introduction to Politics: 2nd edition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
(PBS).Sickness Around the World.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/ Retrieved September
26, 2015.