Prompt health care reform unlikely

We hear about it all the time in the news and anytime Barack Obama speaks. Down the line it could make Obama one of the most successful presidents to ever serve in office if his health care plan works.

But if his health care reform doesn’t work, Obama may not win a second term in the White House.

What exactly is the health care reform and why is it such a pressing issue?

The House of Representatives passed their health care reform bill last weekend and now it must go to the Senate for a vote; Senate has made it fairly clear that the bill will have a hard time passing through them.

If it does pass by the Senate, it will go to Obama for him to sign. Obama has stated in the past that he wants a health care bill signed by 2010, and right now the Senate is the only thing standing in his way.

But what exactly does the bill include?

When Obama wanted a change in health care he had a few select things that had to be included in the bill for him to sign it, one of which was that the plan could not increase the national deficit.

Another guideline was that insurance companies could not refuse insurance to people with preexisting conditions.

That would mean, for example, a 90 year old with a heart condition that needs medicine every day cannot be rejected by insurance agencies.

One of the main goals of the entire health care reform is to insure every American, or at least as many as possible, according to Dr. Peter Embi, a University of Cincinnati associate professor of clinical medicine and the director of the Center for Health Informatics.

The bill would give 96 percent of Americans health insurance.

At the end of 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that nearly 47 million people under the age of 65 were without insurance. 

But if people don’t want health insurance then they shouldn’t have to get it, right? Overall, it’s not that people don’t want it; they can’t afford it.

What happens is that people drop their insurance because it is too costly, Embi said. Then, if that person becomes very sick, they go straight into hospitals where they have to be treated.

That leaves taxpayers to foot the bill for all of those emergency room trips or patients going bankrupt because they can’t afford their medical bills out of pocket.

And why all the sudden has this all come about? Ten years ago health care never seemed to be this big of an issue.

In the early to mid 1900s, companies started offering their employees health insurance as a benefit instead of paying them more money, and this continues to be the business model, Embi said.

In recent years though, health insurance has become so expensive that paying for it is too costly for companies, meaning that they either quit offering it to employees or they take more out of their paychecks each month.

That has resulted in people dropping their insurance altogether because they simply can’t afford it.

It’s all a vicious cycle that Obama has vowed to correct before his time in office ends. His goal of having something completed by 2010 though looks to be in serious doubt.