The CBC’s Henry Champ reports from Washington that, “There are clear signs now that the American public has had enough with their two-tier health-care system. Skyrocketing costs for private insurance are part of it. But another huge factor is the roughly 600,000 job losses in each of the last few months.”
In the United States, the “debate is being driven by an angry, voting public, not by the health industry with its selective statistics. Barack Obama’s election promises to reform health care as well as the deteriorating economy mixed with a Democratic House and Senate all came together and the dynamic (that has stopped previous efforts at health care reform has) changed.”
President Obama’s first budget “contained some predictable losses as budget cutters chopped away at the fat and partisan targets. But the allocation to pump-prime a national health insurance plan was left untouched. That alone makes it almost a certainty that by the end of this year, every American will have access to some kind of health insurance.”
“The current plan seems to be leaning towards government-subsidized premiums for those who can’t afford the full shot themselves. Americans will have to brace themselves for some serious debate in Washington and the fact that any new, encompassing system will be expensive. But as President Obama argued both during the campaign and then from the White House, the costs now to get the program underway will give way to savings in the future, for American employers as well.”
While “industry will still attempt to fight off the efforts of many Democrats who want to go for broke and establish a broad government-run insurance program that could someday lead to a full, Canadian-style, ‘socialized medicine’ system,” Champ writes, “the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies have accepted the new reality.”
The full article is at http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/04/07/f-rfa-champ.html
