Health Care Info Part One

Health Care Info Part One

For many years, it has been a primary campaign promise of those running for elected office that they, if elected, would support efforts to reform the current health care system. In the nineties, President Clinton tried and failed to pass a reform bill. In 2009, President Barack Obama is trying again. There are three basic types of health care reforms being considered by the members of Congress; a non-government plan, a mixed system, and a single payer plan. All three plans being proposed have advantages and disadvantages, and plan choice is vital to good reform. The other issue at hand when considering the reform efforts is the large amount of misinformation being discussed by the public, and the final problem to be addressed before any reform is possible is the money being given to members of Congress from the health care providers in order to try to sway their votes.
The first plan being discussed is the non-government plan, mostly supported by Republicans and other conservatives. The first variation on this plan involves no real change to the current system, with the only real ‘reform’ being increased regulation of the health care industry. The main proposed change would be the ability of consumers to be able to buy insurance from any state. “[This system would not be real reform because] I don’t think that one state has secretly more awesome heath care than the others,” said Rachel Maddow on NBC’s Meet the Press. The other variation on this plan being offered is keeping the current system and simply adding in privately owned cooperatives as an option for consumers. This plan, while an interesting idea, simply takes far too long to set up into a viable system. It would be years before cooperatives would be well enough established to become a serious option for the average American’s heath care. The non-government option would create the least amount of completion for the insurance companies and is, unsurprisingly, the plan that these companies are pushing for.