The comment that stuck out most to me during the clips was that 45,000 people die every year because of a lack of health insurance and that 70% of bankruptcies are due to medical costs. These are embarrassing statistics to a nation who continues to run to the aide of other countries. I am all for helping out other countries who are in need, but we also need to spend a little bit of time to fix our own issues, like health care.
There were several comments providing ideas on how to best approach the health care reform, one was to completely rewrite the entire bill which would seem to set us back, and another, made by President Obama, to fix the broken system before we begin to add more people to it. I would be interested in hearing what kind ideas President Obama or other members of Congress have for fixing our health care system?
I think that we absolutely need a health care system that everyone in the U.S. can access at a price that won't send so many into bankruptcy. Our nation is on the forefront of so many technologies, however we seem to fall behind in things that are equally or more important. It is very easy as an outsider to say that we need to cut the politics and come together to focus on a solution, but I'm sure that will never happen.
It's hard to be in the middle bracket. Many of us are not rich, but at the same time we are not poor. When Nancy Pelosi said that there is "No time to start over," I wanted to believe that she was being sincere, that she has 'our' best interests in mind. But Obama sort of killed it when he reminded me that people in Congress are within the top income brackets. It makes you wonder if these people even understand the urgency of the situation or what it is like to not be covered. Politicians are elected to be our voices... they sometimes listen to us... but do they even comprehend what it is like to live without insurance? Probably not.
ReplyDeleteWatching the highlights of the summit, I was shocked at the fact that Republicans insist on starting from scratch, as if this weren’t a matter of life or death for so many Americans. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it best, “they don’t have time for us to start over,” because you just can’t put someone’s health on hold. I came across an article today stating that a new report expects 275,000 people to die over the next 10 years if a consensus on health care reform isn’t reached and put into legislation. So is starting from scratch worth losing 275,000 people over the next decade? The sick can’t wait anymore and it’s sad that Republicans couldn’t even focus on the issues both parties agreed on. It makes health care reform seem further away than what it should be. I know our health care system will be nowhere near perfect even if these reforms are implemented, but it’s a great start to improving the quality of life for so many people so I think starting from scratch is just not feasible at the moment, especially when so many people’s lives depend on it.
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