Why Healthcare Now?

By Clifford Cui

Lately, our nation has been entangled with a host of challenging issues, such as the surge of forces in Afghanistan, financial system reform, climate change, the stubbornly high 10% unemployment, and the healthcare reform. Every issue is burning, thorny, complex, and intertwined.

As individuals, we learn how to strategize and prioritize our tasks in case of multitasking. The same is true with a nation when it faces multiple thorny issues mentioned above. Unfortunately, the congress and Obama administration has been doing just the opposite. I can prove it with two examples: Healthcare reform and job creation.

Mr. Obama made a promise to reform the healthcare system while he was running for office in 2008. Congressional Democratic leaders made the campaign promise a legislative priority, and are trying hard to pass the healthcare reform bill before the end of the year because President Obama’s credibility is on the line. Hearing some of the pundits, the left and even centrist congress people pushing the speedy passage of the bill on TV, I get very frustrated, and couldn’t help, but shouting back at the screen: “Hello, what’s the rush? We don’t have a real solution yet.”

America’s healthcare system is not sustainable, and badly in need of reform. The key problem is the bloated healthcare costs. In 2007, the U.S. spent $2.2 trillion on healthcare, roughly $7,500 per person, about 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To win over the 60 votes needed to pass the bill by Senate, Democrat leadership in congress yielded to all sorts of special interest groups. Liberals want a public offering in the bill, but Republicans don’t like it; they then cut it. Centrists suggest a buy-in to the Medicare for people between 55 and 64, but some senators opposed it; they then drop it. Some religious groups hit spending healthcare money on abortion; they take the element out. Forks, you can see clearly, this healthcare reform debate is anything, but reducing healthcare costs. What we have now is a toothless new entitlement program that may get in tens of millions people, without adequate financial resources to support it. The inevitable consequences of it will be higher taxes, higher national debt and deficit, lower care quality, and even taking resources away from the care of the seniors. This is bad for the nation, and negative for the badly needed job creation and economic recovery.

I have a colleague, who is a MBA, and who was laid off last November. To find a job, she has been sending out hundreds of email, seven days a week, but still fruitless. Unfortunately, she is not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are facing the same predicament now. To them, healthcare is not on top priority. A day passed without a job is a day of hell.

Healthcare counts roughly for one sixth of our nation’s economy. It affects everyone in a big way and for a long time. If we are going to reform it, we’ve got to do it right. Reforming it is like mixing cement, once you apply the cement to a surface, it will congeal and be hard to remove. Like the healthcare professionals do in do in their practice, let’s not do harm to the healthcare system. Democratic presidents and congress have waited over 70 years on healthcare reform; what’s the harm for waiting a few more months. Since we don’t have a real solution for the healthcare reform, let’s take more time to hatch out one, and for the time being, let’s preoccupy ourselves with the real top priority: Creating jobs.