Obama's health care plan is deeply misguided

(Democrat and Chronicle's Editorial Board blog)

There is no doubt that health care in America needs to be reformed.

But President Obama’s health care plan is not the answer. In fact, it will only make things worse.

On http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf, the President outlines three major problems in the current health care system. In italics are his statements; following them are my explanations as to why his plan will exacerbate our troubles, and why some of his statements are blatantly misleading:

1. Health care costs are skyrocketing. Unfortunately, costs will only grow higher under Obama’s plan. About 35 million Americans will be added to the system, and everyone will have access to a rich, standard package of benefits. While this may sound like a positive improvement, these benefits are far more than what the average American needs or would be normally paying for. And don’t forget that the millions of people who would be added to the system could not pay for their own health care in the first place. The rest of the population would have to pay more to pick up the slack. Hello taxes! (And if Obama’s plan does fail, say hello to another massive bailout!)

2. Tens of millions of Americans are uninsured because of rising costs. Over 45 million Americans - including over 8 million children - lack health insurance. Too bad Obama forgot to mention that 10 million of those “Americans” are illegal immigrants. The US Census clearly states that 45 million is the “number of people in the United States”, not the number of Americans. Come on, Mr. President, I haven’t even gone to college or law school, and even I can understand that. Another fact that the President doesn’t mention is that 13 million Americans are “young invincibles” who do not have health coverage because they think that they are too healthy to need it (according to NY Times). If these two groups were not included in Obama’s statement, then only 22 million Americans would be left uninsured. That means 93 percent of Americans have coverage, as opposed to Obama’s 85 percent. Obama is swelling the numbers.

3. Underinvestment in prevention and public health. Obama’s third statement is not even a complete sentence. Haha…grammar is not the real problem. What is the problem is that the quality of public health will suffer under Obama’s health care plan. Unless he plans to include illegal immigrants (which would be very stupid), 35 million Americans will be added to the health care system. There just simply aren’t enough doctors in the country to care for 35 million more patients. Imagine if there were hundreds of thousands of more patients in upstate New York. The lines at hospitals and at doctors’ offices would be huge. It would take longer to receive care, and the quality of that care would be sacrificed as doctors spend less and less time with each patient.

There are other problems that I can continue to talk about, except by now you are probably getting bored as this article stretches past 460 words. But keep investigating this issue, because the problems associated with Obama’s health care plan are too important to overlook. Do your homework; don’t be like the politicians in Washington who come to a conclusion without actually reading their 1000 page bill.

The bottom line is that socialized medicine simply doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked in the United States. The citizens of Massachusetts and Hawaii can tell you that. And it hasn’t worked in other countries abroad. That’s why people from Britain and Canada come to the United States for treatment. Their systems are screwed up.

Please don’t screw up ours.