Task 2: Education and healthcare should be funded by the government

Question : All education and healthcare should be funded by the government and free for everyone. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Some people believe that the government should make all citizens have free access to all healthcare and education such as mandatory schools and colleges. I would argue that especially for developing countries like Indonesia and India, it is not the best policy to be applied for at least 20 years forward. Despite the state's obligation to the citizens, it can bring some drawbacks to the countries such as dishonesty of the civil servants and reducing the quality of those categories.

Those who support free education and healthcare believe that those aspects are the basic needs of humans. They believe that health and education belong to the human right. This argument is based on a report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Right (OHCR) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It stated that every states have committed to protect the right to health through International declarations, domestic legislation and policies, and at International conferences. Similarly in the education, some countries such as Indonesia had mentioned in the country's opening act that a good education for all citizens is one of the state's visions.

However, discharging all of the schooling and healthcare expenses can brings some bad effects for the state. First, it can increase the rate of corruption. Nowadays, virtually all of the citizens in the world have mistrust to one another because of the reports in Panama Paper. Endorsing a huge amount of money in just one or two sectors will just increase the chance to the money smuggling. Not only this, the sense of belonging to the importance of a good quality of health and education can decrease since the lecturers and doctors focused on the side research more to fulfil their living needs. Moreover, the civilians are going to ignore their health and school because they can take them with nothing to lose.

Based on the aforementioned evidences, it is clear that free charge for all education and healthcare will not be the best choice for residents. The government can subsidize the access for those who need by enhance the scholarship programs or special hospitalizing cost.