by : Jennifer Newell
Health care in the United States is preparing to be put to the test. At a crucial time in the economic history of the country, advances made toward providing health care to more and more people may not be enough to counter the vast numbers of citizens losing health care benefits in the current recession. While it may be months or years before the truth is revealed in numbers and statistics, there is no doubt that the health care system is now facing one of its greatest challenges in decades.
Only weeks ago, which happened to be days before then-President-elect Barack Obama took office, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a bill that would expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover another 4.1 million low-income children via more than $32 billion in funding. Without much delay, the Senate has followed suit and passed the bill as well.
The Senate voted 66 to 32 to pass the SCHIP bill, which will now be delivered to the desk of President Obama for his signature. The final version included medical coverage for legal immigrants, which had been a sore subject with Congressional Republicans but is only the tip of the health care iceberg that was Obama’s campaign promise of providing all Americans with health care. With nearly 7 million children soon to be covered under the SCHIP program, further steps can be taken to ensure that other uninsured groups of Americans will be absorbed into government-related programs as well.
But will any of those steps be enough to ward off a health care crisis in America? People are being laid off from jobs in near-record numbers. Each day, the news media reports thousands —even tens of thousands —more jobs being lost to cost-cutting measures at companies big and small. And the majority of those losing jobs are losing health care as well, due to the overwhelming costs of extended plans like COBRA or the sheer inability to pay for health care when income has dropped or disappeared.
While there are many, many casualties that come with mass layoffs, if health care is one of them, the results will be far-reaching and more costly to society as a whole than most industry analysts can even predict. But the Obama administration has taken health care into consideration, which is evidenced by the current economic stimulus package being deliberated on Capitol Hill.
The stimulus plan was passed by the House of Representatives days ago but is undergoing much scrutiny as it goes before the Senate, a governmental body that may not have the majority needed to pass the bill. The plan, as it came from the House, called for a temporary expansion of COBRA, making it possible for those having been at a job for ten years to stay on COBRA until the age of 65, and those with less than ten years of employment at the same job but aged 55 or older could do the same. In addition, the cost of COBRA would be decreased by nearly two-thirds for one year. The bill also addresses those who don’t qualify for COBRA, allowing them to fall under the Medicaid umbrella and claim benefits under that plan. Another part of the complicated and far-reaching stimulus plan would call for improvements to record-keeping in the medical field, which could spur job growth in the information technology field.
However, there is a cost to it all. Opponents of the plan not only argue that the proposals are short-term and will not solve the long-term problem of people losing health care coverage due to job loss, but the price tag on those portions of the bill is high. The COBRA extensions may cost up to $40 billion, and the Medicaid part of the plan will rocket past the $80 billion mark. The record-keeping proposal adds another $20 billion to the overall cost.
With it, the national debt continues to spiral without a sure-fire way to pay for the billions of dollars put forth by the bill and possible law. But without it, what happens to the Americans suddenly left without jobs and likely without health care for them and their families? Those numbers are even more staggering than the $140 billion-plus proposed in the stimulus plan.
Analysts, economists, and everyone involved are weighing the options as the Senate goes through the stimulus proposals with a careful eye. All the while, Obama’s nominee for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services, former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle, has been under scrutiny, thus delaying the confirmation vote even longer. With no one officially in place to spearhead programs and begin the problem-solving process to America’s growing health care crisis, dire issues are not being addressed with the attention they deserve.
Daschle is likely to receive a confirmation vote in the coming days, and all signs point to a favorable outcome for Obama’s HHS choice. And there is no time to waste. The health care system in America is facing one of its greatest challenges in recent times.