Insurance Information

December 5, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama has begun laying the basis for overhauling the troubled U.S. healthcare system, making overtures to interest groups and setting up grass-roots support for the massive undertaking.

President elect Obama, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20th , and is employing many of the Internet tools that he used during his election campaign to get the public involved. The Internet site that he set up, www.change.gov requests that those surfing the site submit ideas designed to bring changes to the costly and inefficient system that is now leaving tens of millions without insurance.

Stephanie Cutter, the transition spokesperson for Barack Obama says that at this time each American is feeling the pressures of high health costs and the appalling lack of quality care. She adds that the Obama team feels that it is important to engage these citizens in the reform process.

According to Cutter, change should begin from the ground up. She says that the transition team believes that this is how it should be on critical issues like healthcare reform as well as other important matters.

Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader, is Barack Obama's coordinator for healthcare issues. It is planned for him to participate in a healthcare reform debate in Colorado Friday. It is believed that in the debate details of the plan will begin to emerge.

Obama pledged to bring health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans during his campaign. I spoke of spending in the vicinity of $50 billion to make U.S. health records electronic.

It is currently the belief of many health reform advocates that president elect Barack Obama will need broad public support in order to overhaul an industry that has become one of the most difficult of U.S. political problems.

After the economy and the Iraq war, polled voters have ranked healthcare reform as being their third biggest concern. It will be a challenging task to find the money and ingenuity to fix the system.

In spite of the fact that the United States now spends more on healthcare than any other developed nation, it still lists more than 47 million people without health insurance. Even though the majority of those insured are receiving coverage through their employers, still businesses are complaining that exploding costs are threatening their competitiveness within the global market.

For example, it is the cost of employee healthcare that is being cited as a major reason why U.S. automakers are now seeking $34 billion from the federal government, and are in such trouble.

U.S. healthcare costs now make up about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product -- or $2.3 trillion. In spite of this, it is projected that the cost of health insurance and health care will grow to 20 percent or $4 trillion by 2015.