Obama's lecture about the health-care reform

September 9, President Obama made a lecture about health-care reform to Congress. Past decades, almost every president has tried to call for health-care reform; however, they all met different challenges from all kinds of walks and failed. Recent years, because of the financial crisis, many middle-classes can’t get security and stable insurance on the job. Many other self-employed people can’t afford it since the insurance fee is too high to buy. In the meantime, many insurance companies deny to insurance for those people who previous illnesses or too risky to cover.

Under this situation, Obama and his group decide to begin health-care reform again. The three basic goals of this plan are: first, provide more stability and security to those who have health insurance. No Americans will worry about whether they will lose their insurances if they move, lose jobs or change their works. No institutions are permitted to change their coverage or their own doctors.

Second, provide insurance to those who don’t. Those Americans who don’t have health insurance will be able to get quality and affordable insurance since the government will create a new insurance exchange where health insurance at competitive prices. Besides, everyone who could afford this insurance is required to get insurance so that the public resources will not be wasted.

Third, it will slow the growth of health care costs for families, businesses and government. Through the reform, both private and public insurance companies will have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premium to prevent from excessive administrative costs, executive salaries and so on.

As to how to implement this plan, President Obama announced that no one dime will be added to deficits, even in the future. Most of this plan will be paid for by the savings within the existing health care system because it is full of waste and inefficiency currently. The rest of this plan will be collected from the drug and insurance companies.

In my point of view, the advantages of this plan far overweigh the defects. In the first place, those who have insurance right now will be protected by the policy. No one could arbitrarily drop employee’s coverage because of sick or else. Those people who don’t have insurance currently and can’t afford to lower-priced insurance right now will have the right and more choices to choose tax credits. All the people will have equal opportunities and all the individuals will be required to carry basic insurance. Besides, this plan will not add deficit. In fact, if slow the growth of health care costs by 0.1% a year, it will actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long term.

The only thing I worry about is that although Obama said the public insurance company won’t takeover the entire health care system, the Americans will not accept it. For Americans don’t like the mode used in British – the universal insurance by government. Nonetheless, I sill believe the health care reform is what the American people need right now.