14 DAY TRIAL // Today, US President Barack Obama is intent on making the final and decisive push towards a sweeping and far-reaching health care system overhaul, aiming to secure support for new sets of legislations, which have the potential of saving trillions of dollars over the next decade. The plan is also meant to improve the efficiency of the system, and to provide at least minimal cover for about 46 million Americans who are currently uninsured as well. The event will take place at 12.30 pm EDT (1830 GMT), and will be attended by a number of important health care organizations.
Among the guests, a White House spokesman mentioned the American Medical Association, the American Health Insurance Plans and the American Hospital Association, to name but a few. Together with President Obama, the guests will discuss ways in which the system can be overhauled from its roots, as, lately, it has become clear to everyone other than the big pharmaceutical companies that the current state of affairs cannot go on for longer. Proponents of this measure wonder how can the US call itself the land of democracy and of the free, when one sixth of its population lacks basic medical coverage, and the rest pays the highest costs in the world.
“We cannot continue down the same dangerous road we've been traveling for so many years, with costs that are out of control, because reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait. That is why these groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment. Over the next ten years – from 2010 to 2019 – they are pledging to cut the growth rate of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year – an amount that's equal to over $2 trillion,” Obama is scheduled to say today, according to excerpts from his statement delivered by the spokesman.
In keeping with sources in the Congress, consensus exists that the health system needs to be drastically changed, but the opinions on how the nation should go about doing this differ considerably. Obama's approach is considered to be a moderate one, in that it proposes the reduction of costs by streamlining the transfer of documents, reducing bureaucracy, and changing the way doctors and hospitals bill their patients, Reuters reports.
At this point, law makers are also considering the possibility of introducing a new method of paying doctors and hospitals, and that's by the quality of the services they provide. This should put an end to numerous cases in which doctors, working together with insurance companies, force people to take numerous useless tests, in order to assess the severity of a condition.
Republican critics and private health care companies drastically oppose the measure, fearing they would lose their piece of the pie, but President Obama argues that it was the Republican administration, under Bush, which left the country with such enormous budget deficits.