American Healthcare

[admin]

Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Plan

On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes - government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong, and that’s why they’ve proposed a plan that strengthens employer coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference.

The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors and plans to implement the plan. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.
Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year.
If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

Make Health Insurance Work for People and Businesses - Not Just Insurance and Drug Companies.

• Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums.
• Create a new Small Business Health Tax Credit to help small businesses provide affordable health insurance to their employees.
• Lower costs for businesses by covering a portion of the catastrophic health costs they pay in return for lower premiums for employees.
• Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.
• Make employer contributions more fair by requiring large employers that do not offer coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of their employees health care.
• Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.
• Ensure everyone who needs it will receive a tax credit for their premiums.

Reduce Costs and Save a Typical American Family up to $2,500 as reforms phase in:

• Lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programs and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market
• Require hospitals to collect and report health care cost and quality data
• Reduce the costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and their employees.
• Reform the insurance market to increase competition by taking on anticompetitive activity that drives up prices without improving quality of care.

The Obama-Biden plan will promote public health. It will require coverage of preventive services, including cancer screenings, and increase state and local preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

A Commitment to Fiscal Responsibility: Barack Obama will pay for his $50 - $65 billion health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.

[helper]

This change was really required.Medicines and medical bills are sky rocketing and high medical insurance expense are adding to it.This change will heartily welcomed by the americans but i dont how the insurance companies are foing to react to it.

[2008]

This is a much needed reform, so many people are affected by it and some might even lose their lives.

I really hope that he's able to tackle on this issue efficiently. As far as him helping out small business owners with this expense I'm looking forward to it. Also, I hope he does manage to lower drug costs as well as it's tough for the elderly to afford it at times.

[scout swimmer]

Without having done the math the projected costs of health care reform are low by an order of 100 and don't seem to reconcile with projections for Medicare stabilization. If you generate funds by rolling back Bush tax cuts (funds that were obtained by raiding Social Security surpluses) they should be set aside for Social Security and never co-mingled with general funds again.

[alana]

I watched this and was amazed at how other countries confronted the issues of healthcare for all.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...roundtheworld/

We could learn some lessons here.

[Bret]

I have great health care. But when it comes to getting shots for our new baby we have to go to the Board of health to get them, because my health care only covers so much per year. But if you are on welfare you can just go to the doctors office. This should change, it would save the country millions. A doctors office charges $500+ or go to the Board of Health and its $30.

[scout swimmer]

I was surprised when I attended Congressman Fortenberry's town hall meeting by the number of women that had shown up to express their concerns about the prevalence of autism. My wife works with special ed students and there are a surprising number of cases of autism within the school system. This appears to be an epidemic and the root causes need to be addressed.

[Frank]

The cost of health care in USA has been going up at much higher than the average inflation rate year after year. The main reason is due to the attitude of the professinals in the health care industry.
Most of medical doctors and pharmacists are ones of the smartest persons. In anciant time, people who chose to be medical doctor were for saving life and gaining respect from community not for money. Because the community has not given enough respect and educational advisers have not emphasized the points to the students enough. So more and more medical doctors and phamacists aim at money. When they see their less smart classmates who are in other industries as top managers or ceo make so much money, they want, too.
Most ceos and top managers of health care industry are also medical doctors and pharmacists. They all want more money. This is the main reason the cost of health care has been going up much more than the average inflation rate year after year.
In order to change their attitude, our political leaders, community leaders, and scool advisers have to work together to find ways to honour medical doctors and to make them to not worry of money including both their tuition and their retimement. Meantime, we have to legislate the health care industry like utility industry limiting its cost increase to not more than inflation rate. We have to emphasize that the health care organizations should be a non-profit organizations. If people aim at making money, they should go to other industries. In last few years, a lot of non-profit health care organizations and non-profit health insurance companies switched to profit organizations. In order to bring down the cost of the health care, this trend should be corrected, too.

[jim@vistahp.com]

Sadly, I just finished assisting yet another small business close its doors - a primary care physician practice. Primary care physicians, the first warriors in the trenches of the U.S. healthcare, are having a difficult time surviving in a system which rewards specialization, in fact, Medical schools are top heavy from the stampede of students opting for the more remunerative specialty groups. This issue must be addressed by medical schools, insurers, and the governmental reimbursement system. Primary care physicians are the crucial building blocks in a preventative health care system.

[peroculusadastra]

Agree that the health care system in America is in dire need of attention.
Obama's in come is well over 250,000 a year, do you believe he will actually tax himself and his wife?
Another item, we all talk about Government healthcare,, does Obama and Biden a long with other liberals and some moderate republicans actually know what lies out there in the form of health care and who is in need. I don't believe so.
I have a nephew in Florida that is 15 years old. He has a couple of mental health issues. The past 3 years he was on a government health care system from FLA and the US. Within the 3 years his health care cost Florida and America, over 1 million dollars!!! Can we afford this as a country with the somewhere of 80 million mental health patients? Plus there are those that are chronically ill such as Alzheimer, for 1, heart, lung, liver, kidney, brain, auto accident victims, so on and so on. We will see a trillion dollar bill within 4 years.
Medication is a joke. The pharmaceutical companies rape the customers while bringing in billions of dollars annually on a drug that actually costs $2.00 per script., versus their $85.00 price tag. Pharmacists don't pay anywhere near the higher cost only the smaller amount.
We will be further in debt than we are now and alot worse off with health care, Care.