U.S. prepares for Healthcare reform

President Obama's plans to reform American healthcare have created a stir of controversy on Capitol Hill and throughout the nation. This long-standing debate stretches across presidencies, but is gaining serious ground in this administration. Obama plans on adopting a government-run healthcare provider as an option to patients, while also allowing personal selection between private or public insurance. He hopes to complete all of his reforms by the end of 2009. By creating a government-run healthcare provider, Obama plans to create greater competition in the market and lower all healthcare plan prices. Obama also plans to create a complete digital database for all medical records that could save the government a projected $77 billion dollars. In an exclusive interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's Good Morning America, Obama addressed concerns for healthcare reform. "There tends to be the attitude of 'We have a great system and if we just don't mess with it and the U.S. prepares for Healthcare reform By Gina Barker managing editor I The Signpost Currently proposed plan examined by administration, Congress and countryObama folks aren't trying to do too much we'll be okay,'" Obama said. "That just isn't the case. Doing nothing means more people losing their coverage, higher costs for families, higher costs for businesses, and Medicare and Medicaid will go bankrupt. If we don't make these decisions we'll be worse off." In fact, healthcare in America ranks 37th in the world's health care systems trailing far behind France, Israel, Singapore, and Canada. These statistics come from the last World Health Organization (WHO) ranking from 2000. WHO also ranks America as spending the most on healthcare compared with any other nation, showing the U.S. as using 15.3% of the total Gross Domestic Product income towards healthcare. Students especially are vulnerable. In an InsideHigherEd.com story from March 2008, 1.7 million college students within the traditional age bracket are uninsured. "My wife and I were insured a couple of months ago," said Blake Taylor, a WSU senior, "but I quit my job and so we no longer have insurance. We thought we'd be okay without it. It's a big risk. We know that. But it's causing me a lot more stress than I though it would." "It's tough because you want quality of care, but you also want affordability." Weber State University's Student Health Center provides free healthcare without appointments where students can receive basic care. For Utah schools, students are not required to pay any upfront costs to see the physician and no insurance information is required. While services like these help with some medical cases, each year several cases require referrals to doctors off campus. Dr. Shawn McQuilkin said he sees many students every year with no insurance. "Probably half the students who come in here have nothing. There's a real problem." He explained how uninsured students could be affected by lack of coverage. McQuilkin said if an uninsured person were to accidently sever off four fingers one weekend using a ban saw, when they got into the emergency room the hospital would give a price guide for how much each finger costs to sew back on. Some people cannot afford all four fingers and as a result the hospital will only reattach what that person could afford, meaning one or two or three fingers would end up as medical waste. "Is the Canadian system perfect? No, they have their share of problems," McQuilkin said. "But in terms of the acute problems, the acute care, national programs seem to handle that and we don't seem to handle that very well. Its frustrating from my standpoint to see someone who needs a referral to a specialist that can't get in to see the specialist because of the cost." By creating a competing government health provider, Obama hopes to drive down healthcare costs in a greater competing market, allowing Americans who choose to keep their healthcare provider to pay significantly less. Also, all healthcare providers will be required to cover pre-existing conditions at an affordable rate for the patients. But Obama's healthcare reform would not come without pitfalls. CNN estimates Obama's plan will cost more than $200 billion a year by 2019. President Obama has met strong resistance from lobbyists for privatized health-care and the Republican Party, and has yet to convince the American Medical Association his plan could work. Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, opposed Obama's healthcare plan and is in the works for creating his own plan which would allow an allotted stipend to patients which could be used to choose an insurance plan. According to a Fox News interview with Sen. DeMint, he said "Americans don't want more government in health care. I mean the government is the most impersonal. It's the most bureaucratic and wasteful aspect of our society. And health care is very personal and private." This Wednesday President Obama will follow up his interview with Sawyer in an online Volunteertown hall meeting address, allowing audience members who submitted questions to present their concerns for the healthcare plan. For the past week Obama has reached out to the online community via Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube asking audiences to submit questions. One submission from Michael Church who lives in Tooele, UT and is suffering from severe asthma that requires him to be on oxygen asks "If you're going to start with healthcare reform, why don't you start with these major pharmaceutical companies and impose price caps and regulations into their operations?"