Summary of Obama’s Heath Care Plans
Headlines of Obama’s proposal to reform health care are everywhere, but unless you’ve dug deeper, you may not know his plan. CNN.com has done an admiral job of presenting the issue without bias. Here’s a brief summary of the issues at stake.
President Obama desires an overhaul of the U.S. health care system so that low income individuals and those without sufficient coverage from their employers can have adequate care at minimum expense. The issue in dispute isn’t so much the “what” but the “how.” In a perfect world, everyone would like affordable health care for the masses, but how to do it and how to propose a bill that would get passed by Congress and not dispute the current health care system is the dilemma.
On the one side, Howard Dean1 believes that a public option in which government takes a direct role in managing health care is an absolute necessity in health care reform.
On the other side,
“Critics suggest that if the government creates an insurance option backed by taxpayer funding, there would be an uneven playing field in the industry. Private insurers wouldn’t be able to compete with the government prices, and soon, the government would control a great deal of the health care in America, critics say.” 2
This is where the role of President becomes an important one. Knowing a full-blown government-backed health care system will never pass, Obama will have to weigh the positives and negatives of each consolation and come up with a plan he and his people believe will get passed.
The beauty of America’s political system is that no single person or entity can make unilateral decisions, preventing tyranny and general craziness from entering the country. The downfall, however, is that to please enough people to get anything passed, every idea and movement must be watered down to the point that enough people are happy, often times defeating an idea’s original intent. Good leaders will find the right middle ground to affect change while preventing alienation of the public, and good followers will recognize the need for compromiseand withhold judgment until all the facts have been unveiled.
Health care reform happens to be one of the more fervent issues in the political world of late, so expect to see a lot of changes to each side’s wishes in the coming weeks and months.
Read on:
CNN.com – Health care debate focuses on public insurance option
CNN.com – Obama calls for overhaul of U.S. health care system (from March 2009)
Yahoo! News – Former Gov. Dean calls public option indispensable
- former Governor of Vermont made most famous for this video in which he got a little overzealous amidst his attempt at a 2004 Presidential nomination ↩
- http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/17/health.care/index.html ↩
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Comments
Your review of the Obama Health Care plan tries to simplify a very complex set of questions. Some are:
1. Do we want the government controlling a third or more of the GDP.
2. Has the government ever handled any public project efficiently, or profitably.
3. Do we already have too much government intrusion in our lives.
4. Although the system is expensive, and there should be a mechanism for those unable to obtain health insurance, do we trash a system that works well for 80% of the population ?
5. Best of all… Is CNN really unbiased??
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