By Tommaso Verderame, 14, and Izaak Hayes, 17
Published: September 22, 2008
While the race for the presidency continues on through November, some tough questions are being asked by everyone—from politicians to newly concerned youth. Two issues continually rise to the forefront of conversations nationwide: climate change and health care reform.
How will these issues affect today’s youth as adults? Will young people have to radically change their lifestyles as climate change begins to take its toll? What will people have to do to obtain basic health services in the future?
Although the answers to these questions are not clear, they are fueling plenty of proposals by the presidential candidates. In addition to youth interviewees, Y-Press talked with two experts to assess the likelihood of significant reform in the next presidential term.
CLIMATE CHANGE
On the heels of eight years of George Bush’s presidency, which the League of Conservation Voters calls “arguably the most anti-environmental president in our nation’s history,” youth are getting increasingly concerned about climate change.
Megan Waggoner, an 18-year-old Alaskan Democrat, is typical of a lot of youth. “Climate change is huge, and it’s definitely a subject that needs to be addressed and needs to have action. I think that that should be at the frontline of any candidate’s campaign.”
In her opinion, the Kyoto Protocol is the most important piece of legislation today. She was only 7 years old in 1997 when the protocol was first proposed.
The protocol is an international agreement that sets binding targets for 182 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gases. Given its complexities, its ratification was not achieved in 2005. While most member nations have ratified the treaty, the United States is among a handful of countries that have not yet done so.
As assistant secretary of state for oceans and the environment under the Clinton administration, David Sandalow was early on the scene when the Kyoto Protocol was first proposed. Sandalow, who is currently a senior fellow with the Brookings Institute, agrees that drafting eco-friendly legislation is a top priority, though he differs with Megan in one key way—he believes that the Kyoto Protocol should not be ratified.
Sandalow stressed that ratifying the Kyoto Protocol would be too expensive for the United States. “Nobody out there [among the presidential candidates] is talking about actually ratifying the Kyoto Protocol,” he said.
Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have their own plans to clean up the environment. Both propose to reduce carbon emissions. McCain also says he would support a scaled-down version of the protocol, stressing that China and India must participate. Obama has proposed a Global Energy Forum to address worldwide environmental concerns, which would bring together 13 countries (including China and India) rather than the 182 that are members of the Kyoto Protocol. 
Sandalow would prefer that the next president simply make some drastic reductions in fuel emissions rather than jump headfirst into an international treaty. He has argued for better fuel standards in this country, noting that “interestingly, China has tougher fuel efficiency standards than the United States.”
Such a move would resonate with today’s youth. Rachel Briggs, 17, of Honolulu, Hawaii, says if she were president, that would be her first move. “I would be trying to change fuel emissions, and I think that’s really a disaster right now. I think we need to make a change if we want to have a world in the future,” she said.
Other youth take a harder stance. Gavin Bauer, 18, of Portland, Maine, would like to see a carbon tax. “I think that there should be heavier fines on automobiles,” he said.
Sandalow is optimistic that the U.S. will enact a more meaningful environmental policy soon, with a cleaner world in time for today’s children’s children.
“I mean in terms of the longer-term goal of 80 percent reductions by 2050, with today’s technology, it would not be impossible to do that. We’re talking 42 years in the future, and technology advances dramatically. I mean, think back 42 years, to 1966. We didn’t have the Internet. We didn’t have cell phones. We didn’t have personal computers. The world looked very different, almost unrecognizable.”
Sandalow continued. “So taking it forward 42 years, I think it’s very possible to believe that we will have the technology to allow us to lead lives like we lead today, while emitting 80 percent less carbon.”
He emphasizes that environmental reform will not cause Americans’ quality of life to suffer. “This is an opportunity agenda that can create jobs. It will help us avoid the worst impacts of global warming on the American people. This is not about sacrifice. This is about creating opportunity for people,” he said.
HEALTH CARE
For many years, concerns about health care have been expressed generally by older, more mature adults. Today, almost everyone is worried.
Sterlin Pendergrass, 18, of Crossville, Ala., thinks the system is “in shambles,” and its reform needs to be a top priority of the next president.
“Something needs to be done so everyone can have health care coverage,” he said. “A lot of families can’t afford to get sick and go to the hospital or even the doctor’s office. A lot of times Medicare and Medicaid won’t cover everything. A lot of people can’t even get on Medicare and Medicaid.”
The number of uninsured or grossly underinsured Americans is hard to pinpoint. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately one-seventh of the population is uninsured, and many more have minimal coverage. The Census also reports that new immigrants and the elderly are particularly hard-hit. However, the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research group, reports that 80 percent of uninsured Americans are native or naturalized citizens.
Affordable health care is at the forefront of many Americans’ minds. Unpaid claims, huge deductibles or fear of an employer dropping coverage altogether are not foreign to most American families.
“With many elderly relatives, I’ve seen the impact that the high cost of health care can have on the quality of living,” said Glenn McLaurin, 17, from Garner, N.C.
One problem, according Russell Hanson, a political science professor and author at Indiana University, is that the U.S. has taken a piecemeal approach to coverage.
“We don’t have any kind of national system in place now. It is partly based on coverage through employers. It is partly based on self-insurance for those who are their own employers. It is partly based on Medicaid for poor people. It is partly based on taking care of more retired people,” he said.
A system of national health care, as backed by U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, would be one way to extend coverage to all Americans. Such a system would guarantee eligibility to everyone and “no one would be turned away because of a pre-existing condition or illness.”
Other countries have been effective in creating national systems. “Canada and Britain and most of the Western European countries all have one or another version of national health care, and it is, in fact, less expensive than health care in the United States, and it is available to everyone,” Hanson said.
“It also means that people may have to wait for elective surgery. They can’t get it just whenever they want it. And it might mean that in the end they don’t get the best medical care that’s available in the world because it’s standardized health care.”
The Republican candidate, U.S. Sen. John McCain, opposes national health care in part because of some of these access issues. He advocates tax credits to help lower-income families and individuals obtaining health insurance.
Each candidate also proposes ways to save millions by eliminating waste among health care and insurance providers, computerizing recordkeeping and information, reducing unneeded procedures and increasing disease prevention and management.
Many young people, such as Beth Foster, a 17-year-old from Charlottesville,Va., believe health care reform can’t come soon enough. “I think that it’s ridiculous that we’re one of the wealthiest countries and nine million children are without health care,” she said.
The biggest impediment to increasing health care coverage for all Americans is the cost. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, total national health expenditures in 2007 were expected to be about 16.2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, or about $2.3 trillion, or $7,600 per person.
“It’s just a very expensive proposition to cover about 47 million people now in the United States who do not have any insurance, other than what they can get at a local emergency room, and then probably that same number is underinsured even if they have some kind of insurance,” Hanson said.
In order to be cost-effective, insurance must cover a large group so that risk is spread out, and therefore diminished. But according to Hanson, many people who are insured are afraid of national health care because they sense that they would lose more than they gain.
“Each of the people who benefit from one part or another make sure that whatever comes down the road keeps protecting them, and they’re reluctant to accept major changes if that means that they might have to either suffer worse care or pay more so that others can be covered,” he explained.
The problem, as Hanson sees it, is that most Americans do not want to pick up the slack for those who cannot afford coverage at all. “You have to be subsidizing those who can’t afford [health care] on their own, and somebody is going to have to pay that bill, either other citizens or government programs that provide subsidies,” he said.
“So it’s a very expensive, complex process with lots of interest groups trying to protect their turf, and it’s very difficult to find a middle ground that everyone can accept.”
One possible compromise might be state-mandated coverage, in which residents of a given state pay into a state-provided insurance plan.
“Massachusetts has done it,” Hanson explained. “It means that everybody, including those who don’t need much insurance, would pay into it so that those who do need a lot of insurance would benefit from it. Certainly it would be a very expensive proposition, but it’s also probably one way in which you could obtain some measure of cost efficiencies and so reduce the administrative costs of health insurance in the United States.”
A more popular possibility is for the government to offer greater incentives for businesses to provide sufficient insurance to employees.
“We’ll create incentives for them to do the right thing, or maybe penalties if they don’t do the right thing, and lead them in that way toward some kind of package,” Hanson said. “If you look at the proposals of McCain and Obama, there is lots of talk about how one could use the tax code to encourage people to take out more insurance, or reward employers who provide it.”
Assistant editors: Jordan Gaither, 17, and Paul Winston, 16
