US Health Care Reform for Beginners

At Christmas’s eve, the United States Senate passed their version of the Health Reform Bill. After that fact, 30 of the 46 millions people without health insurance in the US are seeing how their chances to obtain a better health and quality of life are closer than ever.  At November the House of Representants did their job passing their own version. Now the last step before to send the final proposal to President Obama’s signature is the reconciliation of both bills.

The US Health Reform is mainly focused in the financial provision of healthcare. In the context of the US health organisation – health market based by private insurances companies – this reform attempt to improve the regulation of these companies, decrease the number of US citizens without health insurance and reduce the trend of increasing costs in the health industry.

But, it is a matter of fact that exist uncertainty in the success of the most important campaign idea of President Obama. Three weeks ago, the republican Scott Brown was elected Senator of Massachusetts, taking Ted Kennedy’s seat, who died in August 2009. His victory means that Democrats will no longer have the 60/40 majority in the senate that they need to pass the final – reconciled – bill and prevent the filibuster action of the Republican Party (Bill to death).

So what are the main issues of this reform, and why the Republicans and some Democrats are not quite convinced?

The first issue is the so called Public Insurance Option, that means the government would run its own health insurance plan changing the conditions of the market. This proposal is only considered in the House of Representant bill, not in the Senate bill and is likely to be dropped. The second issue is abortion, which has been highly contentious during the debate. Finally, the third main issue is regarding how to pay the bill. The Senate calls for an increase in the payroll tax that people pay for Medicare and places a new tax on high cost plans like “Cadillac”. The House would tax individuals who earn more than $500.000 a year and couples who earn more than $1 million. Remember both bills estimated the increase in the health care expenditure by nearly $900 billions the senate and over 1 trillion the House.

In a desperate movement in order to save the reform,  President Obama has invited the Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress to meet near the White House to work on health care reform legislation. Based on the bill of the Senate (no more Public Insurance Option) he is trying to obtain some sort of “collective” support for both parties in a final attempt to became this reform real (or part of it at least).

We will see the discussion the next days. For the health of  the US citizen, I hope some sort of final agreement must be done.