Obama Recognizes Health Insurance Reform Necessary For Economy

The president of the United States Barack Obama, said in his weekly speech on Saturday that the reform of the country's health insurance system is crucial in this time of recession that seems to have lost strength. The last month already showed the first signs of improvement as the stock market seems to recover and the home sales and construction improve. Last week the Labor Department announced that unemployment has fallen slightly in July falling from June's 9'5% to 9'4%.

"The numbers are indicative of work we have begun to put the brakes on the recession and that the worst has happened," said Obama. "But we must do more to rescue our economy from this crisis immediately," he added, for which the reform of health systems is an essential pillar."

The reform proposed by the U.S. president aims to provide affordable health insurance to 50,000 million individuals and families that have no medical coverage. This is in addition to efforts that aim to restructure the health care system, which is becoming increasingly expensive.

Two possible scenarios of health insurance reform

According to Obama, reform is reduced to choose between two approaches. The first of these could double spending on health and leaving millions of Americans that go about their daily lives without having health insurance coverage. In addition, it could cause the collapse of the state and federal governments, reports RTVE.es.

On the second, the president said: We can choose another way that will protect people from unfair practices by health insurance providers, and provide affordable and quality insurance to all Americans. Moreover, he added that this option will reduce the rising costs medical coverage afflicting the families, businesses and our budgets.

Nevertheless, Obama has acknowledged that those who wish to maintain the current health insurance system "are becoming increasingly fierce" in their opposition.

However, there is another problem too. The majority of Americans are indeed satisfied with their current health insurance coverage. Therefore, if the country and the lawmakers fail to overhaul the health care system it could be cause of the fierce opposition of many interest groups, including the health insurance providers as well as the American people, the majority of which are satisfied with their coverage and freedom it provides. Yet, this situation still leaves nearly 50 million people, a very sizable minority in this country for whom health insurance coverage is not affordable and who need a change to have access to basic health care. This leaves a very good and ethical question to ponder: when you pay taxes, do you have the right to basic and affordable health care?

Written by Armen Hareyan