Obama laying the groundwork for health reform

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama has begun laying the groundwork for overhauling the troubled U.S. healthcare system, reaching out to interest groups and building grass-roots support for the huge undertaking.

Obama, who takes office on January 20, is using many of the Internet tools employed in his election campaign to engage the public. His Internet site www.change.gov asks people to submit ideas for changing the costly and inefficient system that leaves tens of millions uninsured.

“Every American is feeling the pressure of high health costs and lack of quality care, and we feel it’s important to engage them in the process of reform,” said Obama transition team spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter.

“Change starts from the ground up, and we believe that’s true on critical issues like healthcare reform as well.”

Obama’s coordinator on healthcare, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, will participate in a healthcare reform debate in Colorado on Friday that is expected to begin detailing the plans for change.

During the campaign, Obama pledged to bring health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans and spend about $50 billion to make U.S. health records electronic.

Many health reform advocates believe Obama will need broad public support to overhaul an industry that has become among the most intractable of U.S. political problems.

Voters put healthcare reform as their third biggest concern after the economy and the Iraq war. Finding the money and ingenuity to fix the system will be difficult.

The United States now spends more on healthcare than any other developed nation, yet has some 47 million people without health insurance. Most insured people receive coverage through their employers but businesses complain that exploding costs threaten their competitiveness in a global market.

High worker healthcare costs have been cited as a major reason why U.S. automakers, which are seeking $34 billion from the federal government, are in such trouble.

U.S. healthcare costs now account for about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product — or $2.3 trillion — a proportion projected to grow to 20 percent or $4 trillion by 2015.

UNSUSTAINABLE SYSTEM

John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, part of a health reform coalition that includes the AARP, an advocacy group for older Americans, and the Service Employees International Union, said maintaining the status quo was not an option.

“The current system and its costs and inefficiencies is really unsustainable,” he said.

Daschle, the former South Dakota Democratic senator who is expected to be tapped by Obama to be health and human services secretary, has been in talks with consumer, business, labor and health industry groups that have a stake in reform.  Continued…

Source

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Posts:


(Corrects attribution, which was reversed in paragraphs 13-15) By Keith Coffman DENVER (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team will kick-start the process of healthcare reform with a series of meetings across the country, modeled on those his campaign held last summer. “Providing quality affordable health care for all Americans is one of my top priorities for this

Full Post: CORRECTED: Town meetings start health reform effort
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By David Alexander WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Shirley Hunter reviewed her finances to make sure she could afford to retire in 1999, she never banked on health care costs more than doubling in less than a decade. Now the 74-year-old former California kindergarten teacher finds herself under financial pressure. Despite taking lodgers to help pay the bills,

Full Post: Obama building grassroots support for health reform
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - An analysis of proposals to overhaul U.S. health care by President-elect Barack Obama and members of Congress suggests it is possible to insure all Americans without significantly raising total health spending. Some 46 million Americans, or about 15 percent of the population, have no health insurance. While Americans pay more per

Full Post: U.S. health care overhaul needn’t break bank: study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PARIS (Reuters) - The U.S. economy will probably get worse before it gets better and will need further injections of public money to help it pull out of trouble, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said on Tuesday. Beyond the short term, Washington not only needs to overhaul the financial sector, but also a system

Full Post: OECD urges health system reform
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 2 million children in the United States who have no health insurance of any kind have at least one parent who gets employer-provided medical coverage, researchers said on Tuesday. These parents typically get insurance through work that covers them but cannot afford the extra thousands of dollars that may

Full Post: Many uninsured kids have parents with insurance

Site Navigation

Most Read

Search

Contact

  • kinwrite.com@gmail.com