There are some flaws in his "universal" health care plan. First off, it's not really a universal plan. Obama is allowing people to either choose a private insurance company or to choose the national health care plan. That defeats the purpose of having the national health care plan because if the private insurance companies lower their rates, then the national health isurance loses its purpose.
Another issue with the health care plan is the funding. Obama plans on taxing the wealthy Americans and using the emergency funds from the states that would have otherwise been used to cover the cost of the uninsured's medical coverage. Now without these funds, people without insurance will be forced to purchase insurance whether they can afford it or not. Back to the taxes, it's not just the wealthy individuals who will be taxed, but also big businesses. Honestly, with the way our economy is right now, relying of these taxes to fund the program is not the best idea.
Continuing on with funding, even families that are considered to be of the wealthier class can not always afford these taxes. It's expensive to provide for a family and when one is heavily taxed upon that, it can be almost impossible to make ends meet. Same goes for smaller businesses, once the rest of the bill goes into effect in 2014, it is going to cause some workers to lose their jobs because the business owners who will be included in the taxes are going to be hit hard with the new taxes. Most small businesses do not provide health insurance for their workers so they will be hit with an extra tax penalty for not providing a health care plan.
A universal health care plan can work and be very successful, but Obama's plan is not the one. It is inadequate, much work needs to be done.
A very interesting analysis of the President Obama’s health care plan by Ms. Klingman. However, in several places it appears that Ms. Klingman’s analysis is based on faulty information, or she has bough into the disinformation campaign peddled by the insurance companies and their Republican allies. As the Nobel-prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman explained recently, there is such depth of ignorance about existing healthcare arrangements in America that many people have no idea about the extent to which the government is already involved.
ReplyDeleteTo start with Obama never characterized his health care plan as “universal” as stated by Ms. Klingman. While the plan’s supporters and backers did campaign vigorously for a “public option” this part of the plan was dropped, when there was very little Congressional support for it. In addition, the author mentions that, “Obama is allowing people to either choose a private insurance company or to choose the national health care plan.” There is no national health care plan, all the states will have administer their plans through insurance exchanges.
Ms. Klingman’s concerns about funding and taxes are valid to some extent. However, even without the health care reform, medical inflation has been increasing at double digit rates for the past several years. However, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the new law would reduce the federal deficit by $143 billion over the first decade and in the decade after that by an amount equivalent in a broad range between one quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP. There are still about 46 million Americans without health insurance; and ever since 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt came up with the first national health insurance plan, presidents have been putting forward ideas for plugging this gap and achieving universal cover. In 1970, President Nixon a Republican proposed a health care reform in package, which was later shelved due to its assumed high cost of $40 billion. Four decades later, we now have a much needed, reasonable and relatively affordable health care plan. The American people should take the time to read and understand the plan and not be taken in by Republican demagoguery and disinformation.