Egalitarianism In Obamacare

Bernie Sanders once said “A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much, while so many have so little”. In our society, many people experience inequalities, including racial inequality, gender inequality, and economic inequality. These social inequalities create institutionalized social barricades that most times, cannot be solved without some sort of policy that advocates equity. Inequality means that people have little or unequal access to resources such as education, housing, health care, politics, and many more. It also means that people are treated unequally by society. The adoption of egalitarianism will likely solve issues of inequality, as egalitarian policies in the past have solved the issue. Furthermore,

government has demonstrated the effectiveness of an egalitarian system through policies that advocate equity. One example of this is Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted by President Obama on March 23, 2010. The Affordable Care Act does what it says; it makes healthcare affordable for low-income citizens. Not only does it give low-income citizens the opportunity to purchase health care that would otherwise only be affordable to the upper-class, but it also provides positive secondary long-term effects. The article It Easy for Obamacare Critics to Overlook the Merits of Medicaid Expansion explains that “children whose eligibility [for medicaid] increased were more likely to go to college, earn higher wages and pay more taxes by the time they were 28 years old.” (New York Times) Essentially, this statistic states that healthcare can benefit the future economy. Children will grow up to be financially stable, and will then be able to pay their taxes to further provide for the next generation of low-income citizens. Moreover, not only will egalitarian policies fill the gap of inequality, but they can also provide stability for the future economy. Providing government health care is the most moralistic approach to help those who cannot afford medicare– between 2000 and 2005, “more than 130,000 Americans died because of their lack of health insurance” (obamacarefacts.com) Lacking the egalitarian discipline of government-funded medicare essentially equates to murdering

In our society, people are either born rich and powerful, having the rights and opportunities that those who are born into lower-class would not have. So why should we live in a government system where we allow these inequities to happen? In Justice, Michael J. Sandel discusses John Rawls’ arguments over defining a just society. Rawls believes that “we should reject the contention that the ordering of institution is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born in society at some particular position” (Sandel 165). Rawls points out that our society has chosen to ignore the issue of inequity most of the time, so long that the effects of this indifference do not hurt their positions. Moreover, what Rawls has described in this quote is very much evident in our society. The citizens on top–especially upper class white males–have the power to pretend the inequities in American society don’t exist, therefore making our society unjust. More