The American Dream is Dead

The American Dream is set on a principle of ideals like democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality, yet if a nation’s health care system is a reflection of its history, politics, economy, and national values, then America is horribly failing and not even within reach of it’s “Dream” philosophy. Thus, the American Dream does not even exist anymore. If our nation prides itself on equality and rights, why then do people like Nikki White lack health insurance? Nikki White was uninsured, and so she was unable to treat her disease, lupus, which could have easily been treated. Our nation should guarantee medical treatment to everyone who needs it, especially in a nation who supposedly stands for basic human rights. Convicts are not eligible to vote, immigrants have trouble becoming citizens, and in many other ways America is flawed when it comes to a human's rights. The current American healthcare system is hypocritical. We cannot stand and support the principles of the American ideology if a human’s basic needs are not fought for. If America’s healthcare does not change, it seems impossible for America to be included with other developed, advanced countries, and even more impossible for the American Dream to be valid. The American Dream is an illusion and we can clearly see this since our institutions, like healthcare, do not stand for the American Dream ideology.

In the first half of T.R. Reid’s “The Healing of America,” the reader learns that America is the richest nation in the world, and yet we stand as thirty-seventh in the World Health Organization’s ranking of the quality and fairness of national health care systems around the world. While similar developed nations stick to one model of healthcare for all of its citizens, America uses elements of all four models, thus making us like no other country in the world. The other industrialized, developed countries like France, Germany, Japan, and the UK tend to do much better than the United States on basic measures of health system performance such as coverage, quality, cost control, and choice. These chapters also gave insight into how far we have come from our original values and ideals that Americans seem to still try to hold on to. Americans think the American Dream is still alive and well, however our institutions do not represent this. Why can’t we be the nation we used to be? Dwight D. Eisenhower used a comparative policy analysis approach and borrowed ideas from other nations to create one of the finest highway networks in the world. The basic concept idea was copied from the Nazis and yet no one seemed to care. Why is our nation so hung up on being number one that we can’t open up to new, innovative ideas that may not be our own?

American ideals today are more concerned with capitalism, individuality, and arrogance. Our healthcare system is a direct reflection of our current state as a nation. Americans believe we are number one for everything; we think we are the smartest, most technologically advanced, and most developed. However, we do not place number one for anything even similar to this. In fact, oftentimes we are far from the number one spot. A 2013 study showed that U.S. students ranked 17th in reading and 21st in math. According to Michael Porter, an eminent professor of business at Harvard, and his team, in 2014 the United States ranked 23rd in access to information and communications, 24th in nutrition and basic medical care, 31st in personal safety, 34th in water and sanitation, 39th in access to basic knowledge, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, and 70th in health and wellness (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-wittner/the-united-states-is-no-1_b_5974516.html). This example proves why there really is no such thing as the American Dream because in theory we are number one, but in practice we are not. America has not been number one in a long time, yet our ideals and mindset still place us in the number one spot, which is extremely problematic when it comes to healthcare.

As a whole, Americans will not budge when it comes to change in government, politics, and other set-in-stone systems our culture thrives off of. Thus, the reason our healthcare system is so mediocre and so expensive in comparison to nations like France, Germany, Japan, and the UK is because we have trouble trusting other nations. For so long, we knew we were the best, so why would we take advice from nations that fall below us? What we must realize is that it is indeed time to switch our ideals, go back to our American roots like Eisenhower’s problem solving, and learn from other nations the right way to fix our healthcare system. However, no healthcare system is perfect. There are three Universal Laws of Health Care Systems: “no matter how good the heath care in a particular country, people will complain about it, no matter how much money is spent on health care, the doctors and hospitals will argue that it is not enough, and the last reform always failed” (Reid, 27). The first step is realizing that providing healthcare is a basic human right and the next step is taking advice from other developed nations, who have proven to be number one in the world. These two steps will put America on the right track to success and will bring us back to our roots and ideals of democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality. If we do not, then we will maintain our spot in the world as hypocritical, arrogant Americans.