Obama's Universal Healthcare Insurance Plan

The United States Healthcare System and Universal Health Insurance

Love it or hate it, it would appear that we are being faced with a nationalized or universal healthcare system.As it usually is, Democrats and Republicans are refusing to budge an inch on this bit of change that the Obama administration has put at our feet. Democrats argue that healthcare is a right to the masses, while Republicans have taken the stance that a government run health insurance system would end up as a bureaucratic monstrosity.

The Obama Administration’s Healthcare Solution

Reform the health care system:

We will take steps to reform our system by expanding coverage, improving quality, lowering costs, honoring patient choice and holding insurance companies accountable.

Promote scientific and technological advancements:

We are committed to putting responsible science and technological innovation ahead of ideology when it comes to medical research. We believe in the enormous capacity of American ingenuity to find cures for diseases that continue to extinguish too many lives and cause too much suffering every year.

Improve preventative care:

In order to keep our people healthy and provide more efficient treatment we need to promote smart preventative care, like cancer screenings and better nutrition, and make critical investments in electronic health records, technology that can reduce errors while ensuring privacy and saving lives.

Democrats on the Obama Healthcare Plan

Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system.

Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today. The measure’s cost is reaching well beyond the $634 billion President Barack Obama proposed in his budget request to Congress as a 10-year down payment for the policy changes. Asked whether the cost of a health-care overhaul would be more than $1 trillion over a decade, Rangel said, “The answer is yes.”

Republicans on the Obama Healthcare Plan

Some Senate Republicans, including Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, say the costs will likely exceed $1.5 trillion.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that basically every Republican would be against a government health insurance option. “We know that, if the government gets in this business, pretty soon nobody else will be in the business,” Mr. McConnell said.

The ever outspoken Rush Limbaugh is convinced that once the government gets its hands on healthcare, there is no turning back. “The reason why a rollback on health care is going to be almost impossible is because it's going to permeate at virtually every level of our society. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be the hardest thing to roll back. It's easy to lower taxes, for example, and it's easy to sell General Motors to somebody in the private sector. But when you're talking something as massive as national health care with tentacles that go as deep into the strata of our society as possible, you know, rolling all that back, that would be major”, Limbaugh said.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican of the Senate Finance Committee, added that he had not yet decided whether he believes the spending cuts Mr. Obama has proposed were sensible.

Guiding Principles of the Obama Universal Healthcare Plan

President Obama is committed to working with Congress to pass comprehensive health reform in his first year in order to control rising health care costs, guarantee choice of doctor, and assure high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

The Administration believes that comprehensive health reform should:

Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government

Protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health care costs

Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans

Invest in prevention and wellness

Improve patient safety and quality of care

Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans

Maintain coverage when you change or lose your job

End barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions

Steps the Obama Administration has taken towards Government Healthcare

The President signed the Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act on February 4, 2009, which provides quality health care to 11 million kids – 4 million who were previously uninsured.

The President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act protects health coverage for 7 million Americans who lose their jobs through a 65 percent COBRA subsidy to make coverage affordable.

The Recovery Act also invests $19 billion in computerized medical records that will help to reduce costs and improve quality while ensuring patients’ privacy.

The Recovery Act also provides:

o $1 billion for prevention and wellness to improve America’s health and help to reduce health care costs;

o $1.1 billion for research to give doctors tools to make the best treatment decisions for their patients by providing objective information on the relative benefits of treatments; and

o $500 million for health workforce to help train the next generation of doctors and nurses.