Health Care Reform: A Moral Imperative

"The time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on healthcare."

Tonight the President addressed a joint session of Congress to urge them to continue to seek solutions for healthcare reform in a bipartisan fashion. The President offered some ideas for what he would like to see in the reform package and indeed some of these items have already been agreed upon by both political parties. The following points are what I remember off the top of my head:

1. Those with pre-existing conditions will not be denied healthcare coverage.
2. Insurance companies cannot drop you when you become ill.
3. Employers will have to make contributions to a healthcare fund if they do not provide healthcare coverage to their workers.
4. There will be a health insurance exchange where individuals who do not have an employer-based plan can purchase affordable care from existing insurers. A self-supporting (through premiums) public insurer should be an available option on the exchange as a competitor to private insurers; more competition should foster greater affordability.
5. Medicare and Medicaid will remain unchanged but there will be a mandate to combat fraud and waste within the current systems.
6. Everyone will be required to sign up for some sort of plan to help reduce the frequency of emergency room visits for primary care which we all pay for in our current premiums.
7. There will be no coverage for illegal aliens (who primarily use the emergency room for primary care, hmm?)
8. There will be hardship allotments and tax credits for individuals and small businesses who demonstrate financial need to cover healthcare costs.
9. ...and more, I am sure.

Furthermore, the President addressed the scare tactics being used to quash the reform debate primarily propagated by Republicans and right-leaning individuals and groups. He declared the oft repeated propaganda that there will be government-sanctioned 'death panels' as an outright lie and that the whole idea of a government takeover of healthcare is pure fiction. Finally, the President threatened to "call out" anyone who continued to disseminate false information about healthcare reform.

Of course the biggest part of the healthcare initiative is cost. The President made it clear that he will only sign a bill that does not increase the deficit and that savings gained by reducing medicare and medicaid waste and fraud and employer contributions into the healthcare fund will be used to cover the estimated $900,000,000,000 tab over the next 10 years. In any case, the bill should include a provision that any savings that are not realized must be covered by reductions in spending elsewhere in the general budget.

Sadly, those Republicans who are hell-bent on defeating reform for the sake of defeating anything this President proposes sat in protest as the President delivered his speech. Some Republicans agreed with some of the talking points but most were resolute in not supporting the President, at least in public.

At the end of the day, the President called upon all of us to support healthcare reform as a moral imperative, and rightly so, and implored us to honor the spirit of Ted Kennedy by doing so.