About Health Care Vouchers

As the price of modern health care continues to climb astronomically, many people are beginning to think that there must be some sort of solution that would make health care more affordable and accessible to the average citizen. Health care vouchers are one proposed method of doing just that. The idea is that health care vouchers will significantly help to lower the price of health care and to make sure that all citizens have access to it.

Significance

• The concept of societally supported health care vouchers is extremely important because of the fact that it proposes a massive alteration to the traditional model of health care. It is a complete departure from the either socialized or privatized systems that are currently in place in most nations. Also, health care vouchers are important because of their hot-button political status and their extremely controversial nature within the sphere of the contemporary political arena.

Benefits

• The benefits that proponents of health care vouchers claim to be apparent are exceptional. Health care voucher plans would provide free basic health care to all of the citizens in a given society. Unlike socialized health care systems, however, health care voucher plans would still allow for citizens to purchase additional coverage at their own expense, above and beyond the basic care that the vouchers would provide. This, proponents believe, would be the perfect marriage between privatization and socialization.

Risk Factors

• Those who oppose health care vouchers are just as adamant in their position. Some argue that health care vouchers aren't radical enough because they still allow the more affluent members of society more access to health care than others. On the other side of the argument, there are those who claim that the increases in taxation that would be necessary to support health care vouchers aren't fair and could be disastrous economically.

Time Frame

• Health care voucher plans are still only that: plans. There are many supporters who believe that health care voucher systems should be put into place immediately, while there are others who wholeheartedly disagree and think that health care vouchers would be societally disastrous. The public at large remains relatively ignorant of the voucher plans and so no real consensus can be reached at the moment. In other words, it's simply uncertain whether health care vouchers will become a realized concept anytime soon.

Type

• There are, of course, different types of health care voucher plans in existence. The basic difference between the plans is how radical they are and what type of changes they would require. The areas of differentiation tend to be the means (how taxes would be levied to support the health care vouchers) and the method (what basic services the health care vouchers would supply to their recipients).