Obama’s Health Reform and Weak Points Revealed Essay

Introduction

The USA is now undergoing a period of multi-aspect transformations and experiences large-scale changes in all spheres of the country’s functioning. This change is majorly provoked by the change of political power –the new President of the United States Barack Obama is full of enthusiasm actively reforming the fields requiring that. One of the spheres of his active activity is medical care provided in the USA. The sphere proves to be inefficiently structured, reveals many weak points and disadvantages.

Main body

A set of problems need attention, so the main attention of Barack Obama and Joe Biden is focused on the provision of equal access to medical care for all US citizens. The core challenge to achieving this goal is the increasing number of uninsured people who cannot afford medical insurance because of its growing cost. Consequently, the chief goal of the US administration is to re-focus the benefits promised by the medical care in the USA on citizens but not on medical products manufacturers (Health Care).

One more problem defined by the President’s administration is the underinvestment in prevention and public health:

Too many Americans go without high-value preventive services, such as cancer screening and immunizations to protect against flu or pneumonia. The nation faces epidemics of obesity and chronic diseases as well as new threats of pandemic flu and bioterrorism (Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan to Lower Health Care Costs and Ensure Affordable, Accessible Health Coverage for All, p. 1).

So far the main problem the US government faces in reforming the health care system is the financial side of the issue – the costs of medical care are too high to be handled by average Americans:

The United States spends over $2.2 trillion on health care each year—almost $8,000 per person. That number represents approximately 16 percent of the total economy and is growing rapidly (President Obama’s Fiscal 2010 Budget).

The set of problems identified for overcoming in the nearest future is rather varied and diverse, including investing in electronic health information technology systems; improving access to prevention and proven disease management programs; providing multi-faceted help for patients; controlling providers in ensuring high-quality health care delivery; lowering costs by taking on anticompetitive actions in the drug and insurance companies; reducing costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and their employees, etc. (Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan to Lower Health Care Costs and Ensure Affordable, Accessible Health Coverage for All, pp. 2-6).

It is also notable that Barack Obama is very active in solving the issue of health care reformation, which can be seen from his recent establishment of the executive office for healthcare reform in the White House in April 2009 (Reuters). He is very active in the field and promised: “not only to achieve universal health care in his first term but also to cut the average family’s health care health-care costs by $2,500” (Martin).

Conclusion

In general, the challenge Barack Obama has taken together with the Vice President is rather hard to overcome because of the critical situation with the multitude of private health care providers, plenty of insurance health plans, and the heterogeneity of the system itself, making only a narrow group of citizens eligible for free medical care. However, the US President has firmly stipulated health care as the central target of his actions for the nearest future, thus giving hope for the coming change in the discussed sphere.

Works Cited

1. Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan to Lower Health Care Costs and Ensure Affordable, Accessible Health Coverage for All, 2009.
2. Health Care, 2009.
3. Martin, David. Obama calls for health-care reform in 2009. Web.
4. President Obama’s Fiscal 2010 Budget, 2009.
5. Reuters, Thompson. Obama sets up formal office for healthcare reform, 2009.