The State of The Health Insurance and Health Care Reform Union
Earlier this week, President Obama gave his first State of the Union address to a country that's waiting for change, hoping for improvement and clamoring for details as to what our government is going to do to help improve our lives. Now whatever side of the isle you may fall on politically, it seems that everyone can agree on one thing…our health care system is broken, and needs to be fixed. While proposals to reform/fix health care and health insurance have been going through our various governmental bodies, one has to wonder sometimes what the state of things are in regards to health insurance.
In the State of the Union address, according to the article, "What Obama Did Say About Health Care: Four Important Policy Provisions" in Newsweek, around 450 words were uttered regarding health insurance and health care, roughly six percent of the speech. For someone like myself, clamoring to hear more about the government's agenda on health insurance and health care, this didn't seem like much. However, the speech did hit some key points, such as insurance companies accepting people with pre-existing conditions and making health insurance affordable for everyone. It didn't really touch upon the underlying cause of high health insurance rates, the high cost of health care itself, but that's fine. The president wanted to make his major stance on job growth, and I don't think anyone can argue that that's a good thing. One is just left wondering where health insurance falls now, especially since Democrats have lost their supermajority.
Coming from another angle, an article entitled, "Nancy Pelosi's health-care strategy" from the Washington Post gives some details as to the House speaker's drive to get health insurance reform passed. While her and others have been trying to pass health care reform, there are problems that no one likes, such as excise taxes, which even people in her own party oppose. She also said the public's apprehension toward reform is because, even though her party is spouting the benefits, there's not yet a bill that can be dissected. "You can bake the pie or you can sell the pie, but it's hard to do both at the same time." Palosi said.
So while it might seem that health insurance and health care has taken a back seat to job creation, it's not as clear-cut as that. The coming year will be very telling in regards to how much gets done in our government.
