Obama's Proposed Health Care Plan

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."
– President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

Providing quality health care for all Americans is one of President Barack Obama's primary priorities. The number of Americans who are uninsured grows everyday-we need a better system, and soon. The solutions to this problem are to reform the health care system, promoting scientific and technological advancements for medical research, and improving preventative care.

The health care reform legislation that was announced on July 14, 2009, is supposed to "reduce out of control costs, encourage competition among insurance plans to improve choices for patients, and expand access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans." President Obama is going to try to build on the current system: fixing what hasn't worked so well and increasing employer-provided care. The plan is for the new bill to provide 97% of Americans with quality and affordable health care by 2019 and to set up a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers. The goals of this legislation are: to increase choice and competition, improve the quality of care for all Americans, and ensure shared responsibility.

The reform plan is expected to cost between $50 billion to $65 billion a year. The funds to pay for this are believed to come from savings in the health system and from ending the Bush tax cuts on people who earn more than a $250,00 salary per year. Obama organizes his plan into three parts:

"1. Quality, affordable and portable health coverage for all
2. Modernizing the U.S. Health Care System to lower costs and improved quality
3. Promoting prevention and strengthening public health"

He says that his plan will save the average family up to $2,500 every year in health care by:

"* Health information technology investment aimed at reducing unnecessary spending that results from preventable errors and inefficient paper billing systems.
* Improving prevention and management of chronic conditions.
* Increasing insurance industry competition and reducing underwriting costs and profits in order to reduce insurance overhead.
* Providing reinsurance for catastrophic coverage, which will reduce insurance premiums.
* Making health insurance universal which will reduce spending on uncompensated care."

An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has even looked into the potential costs and spending for the American health insurance plan, with the positive results that it works! Based off general health principles, the plan should work. France, for example, is able to offer quality health care to everyone at half the price per person we charge now. Results of the research by the Budget Office concluded that extending health care coverage to most all the 45 million people living in America and lacking health insurance will only add a few percent to our national health care bill. The HELP plan is Obama's attempt to have almost universal health care coverage in America through regulation and subsidies. Insurance companies will have to offer the same coverage to all people, and all people will have to buy insurance. Employers also, if they have more than 25 employees, have to offer their workers insurance. If the public wishes not to buy insurance from a private sector, they have the option of choosing a public plan. This creates competition in the health insurance market that is currently a bunch of monopolies. The government says that the whole HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) plan would cost $597 billion over the next decade. This is less than 4% of the $33 trillion dollars the US thinks current health care would cost over the next decade.

VIDEO:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XafSSiKEyA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDl6t-iFaTE

Works Cited:

Miller Kittredge, Betsey. "America’s Affordable Health Choices Act." EdLabor Journal. 14 July 2009. Committee on Education and Labor. 21 July 2009 .
http://edlabor.house.gov/blog/2009/07/americas-affordable-health-choices-act.shtml

Laszewski, Robert. "A Detailed Analysis of Barack Obama's Health Care Reform Plan." The Health Care Blog. 21 Mar. 2008. 21 July 2009 .
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2008/03/a-detailed-anal.html

"Health Care." Organizing for America | BarackObama.com. Organizing for America. 21 July 2009 .
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/index.php

Krugman, Paul. "HELP is on the Way." The New York Times (2009). The New York Times. 5 July 2009. 20 July 2009 .
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1&em