By Neil Chatterjee 

Buzzwords dominated the recent (well… not so recent) election cycle: Maverick, change… lipstick pigs. The usual campaign jargon that lit up the campaign rallies. Along with it came the usual campaign coverage that falsely gave CNN the impression that it was “the best political team on television.”

But one term was tossed around more freely than late night Sarah Palin jokes.

Universal healthcare.

Ah, yes. The cure for the plague that is the American healthcare system. The one policy dosage that could heal something both politicians and physicians could not. What is universal healthcare? Well by definition of those on the campaign trail:

Universal healthcare (n.): A fuzzy (misleading… and somewhat meaningless) term that people hear to think that medicine will be perfect and just about free.  A term often used to invoke cheers and exuberance in order to make MSNBC’s top ten plays.

But interestingly enough, the demographic reportedly most against the thought of Universal Healthcare is composed of, well, doctors.

Yep, the same people who are heralded as compassionate healers. The same exclusive club that many students, like you and me, aspire to join.

The practice of universal healthcare elsewhere in the world has been hit or miss for the counties that have started it. In some cases, insurance costs are cheaper, drugs become less expensive, and the overall industry of healthcare is more soundly distributed amongst the population.

But doctors are also responsible for finding out what’s wrong with the patient. And if Universal Healthcare is the patient, there’s a bleak prognosis.

First, and foremost, the quality vs. quantity argument is not at bay with any future plan. Doctors are worried that cutting costs will mean cutting resources (they will). Patients may have restricted freedoms in choosing physicians and various other sectors of their healthcare. With reductions of drugs and healthcare costs, increasing availability may in fact reduce the overall worth of medical care.

In order to reduce costs of health insurance, tax dollars shift from alternate resources for the federal government to meet insurance companies half way, and any minimal tax increase the government may laud for compensation may be deceiving.

Take Medicare for instance. During Medicare negotiations during the ‘60s, single-payer system advocates claimed that expenses would hover around $10 billion by what would be the beginning of Clinton’s term.

Woops.

The program led to a cost of around $66 billion in 1990. They were off by a buck or two.

The federal government has had a notorious tendency to undercut ballooning expenses, which makes for a building sense of uneasiness. So in other words, in such a troubling economic climate (things are bad, we know), healthcare may not reach that level of universality for some time now.

But saying “Universal Healthcare may not work” doesn’t fix the lingering problems of our healthcare system. Healthcare eats up 16 percent of our GDP, which isn’t even close to what other expensive healthcare systems costs (about half, actually). As Pre-med students caught up in the political climate of our nation, one should find necessity into learning the healthcare system that we will try to jump into with time. So how can a pre-med UIUC student fix the mess of healthcare today?

Before being pardoned for jumbling up his taxes (figures), Former Senator and former Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle mentioned that our goal should be to keep the quality of technology, drugs and insurances. But he also said that the ability and drive of physicians is what healthcare is hinged on.

Regardless of what the talking heads in Washington decide, Doctor’s still need to learn their stuff. That notion is, truly, universal.