Jackin4Beats Magazine

The recent economic downturn demands a complete overhaul of healthcare policies. U.S. President Barack Obama seemingly cannot disentangle his administrations health policies from the economic mesh. He began with a White House forum targeting cost-cutting measures for high-priced health care costs. This may be a distant goal to achieve as his predecessors have proven but theres not other way out for the fledgling administration: draw a solution now or suffer major drawbacks in the future.

“Our healthcare costs are exploding our economy,” said Melody Barnes, Obama’s senior domestic policy adviser. “When he talks about getting spending under control … one of the primary things he is focusing on is bringing our healthcare costs under control.”

Tempering healthcare costs, along with other segments receiving a sizeable chunk of budget, seems to be an indispensable tool in cushioning the impact of the global recession. Not that Obama seems to realize this. Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who was recently appointed by Obama as health secretary, launched a White House forum with a group of about 120 people comprising doctors, patients, health insurers, and lawmakers to fix U.S. health care. Despite spending about $2.5 trillion each year on healthcare, the government still has to expand its coverage on some 46 million uninsured. Actually they don’t have to, but apparently they want to. Matters are growing even worse as the country is lagging behind other Western countries on indicators such as infant mortality rates and gigantic fatness.

The president earlier promised (he did that a lot) to expand insurance coverage and impose more efficient cost-cutting measures though he has yet to pass a proposal detailing his health care plan to Congress, shockingly enough. Obama is more cautious to avoid what the Clinton administration dealt with in the 1990s when it submitted a detailed healthcare plan to lawmakers. Instead, Obama’s taking the more politically savvy route of saying “change” over and over.

Barnes could not deny the fact that he isnt sending a bill up to the Hill. But this does not end the argument, as he remains optimistic about the administrations handling of the issue. “He’s articulated some of the principles that are important to him, but I think he also strongly believes that to get this done he’s going to have to … be open, pragmatic and listen and engage with Congress to get a bill done,” said Barnes.

To locate the starting point of the healthcare reform, Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease director Kenneth Thorpe hinted at the proposal issued last year by Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus. “That really is the starting point,” he said. “It largely reflects candidate Obama’s healthcare reform proposals.”

Both Obama and Baucus outlined similar principles in their proposals such as better management of life-threatening diseases, effective ways to encourage preventive care, health insurance reform and improvement of healthcare delivery. The Baucus plan, however, took a step further than that of Obamas in terms of its health care expansion. Nevertheless, Baucus still backs up Obamas measures saying that the presidents 2010 budget revealed his very strong commitment” (to bankrupting the United States). He also promised to do all I can to make meaningful comprehensive health reform pass this year just this week.

Not everyone in the White House is pleased with Obamas stillborn healthcare plan. Or with Obama in general, which might have to do with his trillion-dollar shopping spree. Along with some members of the GOP, Edmund Haislmaier, a health care policy expert from Heritage Foundation, claims that the presidents decision to spend $634 billion for healthcare overhaul was a mistake. “He just told every interest group that ‘I’m not really going to reform, I’m just going to expand,’” Haislmaier said.