Research Prospectus

I remember my freshmen year of high school reading a newspaper article about people in Britain needing surgery. They weren’t life-or-death situations, but the surgery would have provided the people more comfort. The article described the lines of people going outside, wrapped around the building, waiting to be seen by their doctor.  A person was interviewed saying they’d probably end up going to another country for their procedure so as not to have to wait over a ridiculous time period of six months otherwise. Even today that writing still resonates with me. I was disgusted at the healthcare the English had to live with; and this was how I became introduced to the system of universal healthcare. I aspire to be a doctor, and my definition of a doctor is of someone that helps people. How can a doctor expect to be as efficient as possible and provide each individual with the care and attention they deserve if they know there’s countless others they need to tend to before the day is through? In my opinion the demand universal healthcare ultimately places on physicians isn’t fair to either the patients or the doctors. A universal healthcare plan implemented into government must also affect the people living in that country. My working thesis is that Obama’s new healthcare plan, “Obama-care”, hurts more people such as the taxpayers and doctors, than helps the people who can’t afford private healthcare.

To support my thesis I would cover Obama’s plan thoroughly, clearly showing what he has suggested and compare it to aspects of our country’s present healthcare. A big portion of my paper would be dedicated to fully dissecting “Obama-care”; what it is, how it would differ, and what Obama’s administration claims the benefits of it would bring Americans. I would also look at articles and statistics showing our country and citizens’ current economic standings and look for a correlation between those and future predictions to see how or if it would drastically affect Americans and our everyday lives.

Counterarguments to my thesis will be that Obama’s new healthcare plan will bring the opportunity of medical attention to thousands of Americans who previously didn’t have it. Those against my position will use pathos to a great extent in their argument, countering, “Do you not care about the working poor who can’t otherwise afford healthcare?” However, this isn’t the main case. My belief is that this group of working poor won’t have access to satisfactory medical care anyway because of the physician’s less ample time to treat them given their more demanding patient list. If the government could provide more hours in a day this plan could then possibly work.

For research I intend to use scholarly articles I find regarding the subjects of the healthcare reform and how its changes will affect the United States.

I have already found three articles that will be useful in my argument against Obama’s healthcare reform. “The Case Against Obama Care” by Beier, Eric MD, MBA shows why it’s unneeded (http://www.medoptima.net/images/121809PERSPECTIVE.pdf), “Intensive Obama care” by Tanner, D. Michael explains the overall cost the new healthcare plan is going to cost American taxpayers (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10296), and “Faithful Patients: The Effect of Long-Term Physician-Patient Relationships on the Cost and Use of Healthcare by Older Americans” by Weiss, J. Linda PhD and Blustein, Jan MD, PhD (http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/86/12/1742) is a study showing that Americans with a close, long relationship with their doctor results in less expenses and less intensive medical care, supporting that this connectedness between patients and doctors would be lost with the switch to public healthcare.

I think I’ll find a lot of interesting facts regarding this topic and be able to a make well based argument on my own based on the data and information I find.