Obama’s health care reform
By: Jason Capriolo
Barack Obama’s historical presidency is now at day 90 and here is a closer look at what Obama and his Cabinet have done to improve our health care in America. This is an issue he spent a great deal of time during the campaign trail and stated he would “cut cost and cover everyone” in many of his political commercials leading up to the election.
December 2008, then President-elect Obama invited Americans to host and attend Community Health Care discussions to reform health care in America. The response was over 9,000 Americans from both sides of political affiliation discussing health care. As required for the community meetings the hosts filled out a Participant Survey and then submitted a summary of the group’s main suggestions and concerns.
Among the 3,276 reports major issues were health care cost, with 28% of participants worried about the overall cost of health care.
Below is a quote from a participant in the Community Health Care discussion from Yelm, Washington as on posted on the Health Reform website:
“If the premium costs continue to increase at the current annual rate, it would eat up most of their retirement savings just to pay health insurance premiums before they qualify for Medicare. The rate of increase of insurance premiums is out of control and they feel powerless to correct the problem.”
Access to health care was the second biggest concern with 37% of the participants showed concern about being denied access to health care. The biggest concern among participants was the quality of health care.
“We’re finding it harder and harder to talk to our doctors, and we’re feeling that our day-to-day health concerns are being increasingly marginalized.” This quote is from the Health Reform website and was a comment submitted during the survey from Albuquerque, NM.
The participants additionally responded with some qualities they wanted in their healthcare: fair, comprehensible, patient centered, choice oriented and simple and efficient. They also gave specifications such as lower cost on prescription drugs.
In February Obama passed a $137 billion stimulus for American Health Care to be distributed by Health and Human Services (HHS). The HHS has created an Office of Recovery Act Coordination to assist them in properly distributing the $137 billion and named twenty year man for HHS, Dennis Williams to Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Recovery Act Coordination.
The office immediately distributed $3 billion of its funds towards Medicaid and Health Care Institutions. Along with the $3billion, $268 million has been allocated to states for hospitals that care for an above average amount of low income and uninsured patients. HHS Spokeswoman Jenny Backus commented on swift action.
“HHS is committed to moving quickly and carefully to distribute Recovery Act funds in an open and transparent manner. We have already worked to put more than $3 billion in Recovery Act funds into states and the new Office of Recovery Act Coordination will enhance and streamline our efforts to get critical resources and potential new job opportunities to the American people during tough times.”
The thought is giving the hospitals a large amount of the stimulus will save the average American from covering the cost the hospitals loses in caring for uninsured patients rather than giving them the boot.
With stimulus money still left to allocate towards health care the Obama administration is pushing to digitize health records. And like cargo and packages are electronically tracked, the administration would like to track Medicare spending, insurance claims and other data by deploying similar software and hiring experts in the field. When there change especially in technology people are hesitate. The new technology will be expensive, resulting in the need for government funding and some doctors and hospitals are worried that would mean a strong government influence.
More information and results from the Community Health care surveys be found here.
Obama on health care.
