Advocates ready to push Obama for healthcare reform

As President-elect, Barack Obama buckles-up for the final take off of his new presidential journey, advocates and a few other medical care union groups also seem to be gearing up for health reform campaigns aboard. They believe it is important for Obama to initiate and act in the first three months in office, and that delayed action would turn ineffective due to competing efforts.

Dennis Rivera, chairperson of the Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) healthcare division said, "Starting right now, we are hiring coordinators all over the country to run this campaign as if it was a presidential campaign and our candidate is basically going to be healthcare reform."

Conventionally, most of the US citizens have their medical insurance covered either under the Federal government's health care programs such as Medicare or by their respective employer companies. But recently there has been a significant shift in the health-care scenario; amidst the current economic turmoil most Americans are losing their jobs and hence their medical insurance coverage, in addition to the 46 million Americans who have never had any medical insurance. The healthcare industry clutches around $2.3 trillion or about 16 percent of the U.S. economy.

"The economic downturn makes it more urgent that we make sure that we're spending our money well on healthcare. “I think now is the time for a real effort on major healthcare reforms”, said Dr. Mark McClellan, a former economic and health official under both presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

The primary agenda of Obama's huge campaign was health care reforms, calling for near universal coverage for all Americans in order to address to the problem of 46 million people deprived of health insurance. During the campaign he made several proposals related to health reforms such as developing a public plan for all the Americans who did not have any medical insurance coverage, expansion of the Federal government's Medicare plan and compulsory medical insurance for children. All these proposals estimated to cost about $60 billion to $100 billion a year.

"We are going to embark into an all-out campaign to try to get universal healthcare coverage and healthcare reform enacted," said Rivera.

However, experts doubt on the implementation of these plans explaining that Obama’s health plan could get more coverage to more people, but at a considerably high cost.

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute who is a libertarian think tank and a critic of Obama's proposals commented, "What's happened in last couple of months makes it much more likely that he's going to achieve health reforms by salami slices rather than feed us the whole salami at once."