Obama will use the current Economic Crisis to pass sweeping Health Care Reform.

Try to remember the economic climate when Social Security was first introduced.

"A limited form of the Social Security program began as a measure to implement "social insurance" during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when poverty rates among senior citizens exceeded 50%" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)

And think about the growing numbers of people losing jobs and, as a result, health coverage for their families.

And think about the president we have and our majority in both houses of congress.

The climate is nearly ideal for movement on sweeping Health Care reform measures that may lead to universal coverage, beginning with coverage for children and families, and then for all who aren't covered by plans through their jobs.

Not this week, not next month, but some time very soon.

:patriot:

like next week

It will start with emergency coverage for the unemployed, like the COBRA plan that just passed but with subsidies to ensure all can afford it.

The Obama plan won't likely be what hardcore progressives want, but more like a universally available plan with a price, but that price covered subsidized for low or no income.

Everyone will be able to afford coverage. And it will happen before the next election cycle in 2010.

As regards your linked OPs:

From the source articles in those OPs, from "the Hill", two quotes from two senators who admit they don't know.

"While noting he does not know exactly when President Obama want to move forward with a universal healthcare measure, Clyburn said"

"Healthcare I feel strongly about, but I am not sure that we’re ready for a major national healthcare plan,” Schumer said."

They don't know.

SChip is about to increase significantly which will help children and low income parents, those on unemployment at 200% of poverty will qualify for Medicaid, those with COBRA will qualify for a 65% subsidy.

Many many Americans are about to experience some form of "government" health care and they will begin helping to push for change for everyone.

we are moving right along toward universal access.

Thanks for the reply, sandnsea!

I meant to post this in GD-P. :silly:

It would solve a lot of problems across the board and it needs to happen.

After a lifetime of being productive, paying taxes and following all the rules, I'm now stuck with a painful hip I can't afford to have treated. Our insurance went from $560 a quarter at the beginning of the Bush years to $1,200 a month 4 years in. This is year #5 being uninsured and it's very scary.

without one shred of evidence.

Sounds like primary season again!

but he did! ;-)

I'll admit it's a crystal ball wishful thinking thing, not unlike how I felt in November 2007.

.

Why, then, aren’t we hearing more about ensuring health care access?

Now, it’s possible that those of us who care about this issue are reading too much into the administration’s silence. But let me address three arguments that I suspect Mr. Obama is hearing against moving on health care, and explain why they’re wrong.

First, some people are arguing that a major expansion of health care access would just be too expensive right now, given the vast sums we’re about to spend trying to rescue the economy.

But research sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund shows that achieving universal coverage with a plan similar to Mr. Obama’s campaign proposals would add “only” about $104 billion to federal spending in 2010 — not a small sum, of course, but not large compared with, say, the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus plan.

It’s true that the cost of universal health care will be a continuing expense, reaching far into the future. But that has always been true, and Mr. Obama has always claimed that his health care plan was affordable. The temporary expenses of his stimulus plan shouldn’t change that calculation.

Second, some people in Mr. Obama’s circle may be arguing that health care reform isn’t a priority right now, in the face of economic crisis.

But helping families purchase health insurance as part of a universal coverage plan would be at least as effective a way of boosting the economy as the tax breaks that make up roughly a third of the stimulus plan — and it would have the added benefit of directly helping families get through the crisis, ending one of the major sources of Americans’ current anxiety.

Finally — and this is, I suspect, the real reason for the administration’s health care silence — there’s the political argument that this is a bad time to be pushing fundamental health care reform, because the nation’s attention is focused on the economic crisis. But if history is any guide, this argument is precisely wrong.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/opinion/30krugman.html?_r=1

The growing numbers of families without coverage associated in now small way to growing unemployment presents an inextricable association between the economic AND health care crises.

This is the point I was trying to make in the OP, rather than the economy making reform less likely, I feel that it actually makes it more important and ripe for action than ever before.

And it's cost effective, preventative, proactive; it's less costly to do these things now than to put them off.

I'm optimistic, cautiously.

etc.

Nice thoght but I doubt that we'll see much more than some bones thrown to the insurance industry.

...ARE ready for Single Payer.

It is the Congress (Democrats & Republicans) who are on the payroll of BIG INSURANCE that are making it "impossible" for Working Americans & the Poor.

HealthCare is a RIGHT in every developed country IN THE WORLD, but Chuck Schumer and his band of Conservative Democrats insist that that would be "too hard" for Americans, and we will just have to settle for less.


"Centrist Democrats"....for those who are proud to be Half-Republican.

But I'll believe it when I see it.

But as Biden was discussing just this morning, working families are now at risk, unions need to be strengthened, this are topics that many thought were only given lip service during the election and that they'd fall off the radar.

This will be a different administration from the Clinton years.

These trying times require and will receive extraordinary initiatives.

:patriot:

We are, after all, the only remaining industrialized country in the world without universal health care.

The United States is a LIBERAL Country.

:dem:

-Laelth

This is just one idea, but Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel has joined the team at the WH to help with HC reform.

http://www.pbs.org/now/news/315.html

"I think the universal part appeals to the Democrats. The voucher part appeals to Republicans. And I think it should make us one big happy family," Dr. Emanuel tells David Brancaccio in a web-exclusive interview

Transcript: Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel on Universal Health Care..."



This blog does not think SP is the way to go...I disagree. That said it lists some of the current ideas on HC.

Obama Health Care Reform: Early Tea Leaves

http://alankatz.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/obama-health-care-reform-early-tea-leaves/


"Emanuel may have a lot to say, too. Incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will no doubt weigh in on health care reform, but he’s not the Emanuel I’m referring to. The one to keep an eye on is his brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, currently Director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the National Institute of Health. Dr. Emanuel is a strong advocate of a voucher system. His proposal has gained significant attention, if not support. But with his brother holding the door open it’s highly likely the doctor will have a voice in shaping the Administration’s health care reform plan..."


Ezekiel Emanuel: New Health Policy Advisor

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/healthlawprof_blog/2008/12/ezekiel-emanuel.html


FWIW here is the old thread on this proposal.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4794449&mesg_id=4794449

...it'll just be more pretty packages with nothing inside.

As long as the predators are allowed to manage our Healthcare we'll be screwed.