Health Care Reform

Anyone watch President Obama's news conference last night? He made some key points about the health care reform effort. We really have two choices. The first one will at least double what we pay for health care in the next ten years with millions more losing their insurance or being able to afford insurance. That's the program we have today, the one where costs have doubled over the last ten years, currently consuming 16.3% of our nation's GDP. America can't afford to pay 32% of our GDP on health care ten years from now which is why the message is clear: change health care NOW.

The second choice is to reform health care. We'll join every other industrialized country on earth with universal coverage and reduce our costs. America spends more on health care than any other country in the world yet we are no healthier for it. In fact, in most categories we're worse than other countries. So not only are we paying more for it, we're not getting as good a deal. President Obama made the point with the car analogy - if your neighbor bought a car and paid $6,000 less for it than you did, you'd want to find the same deal, and he's right.

This morning I even heard an anchor on Fox Business say it's crazy that we spend 98% of our health care dollars on treatment, and he's right. That's why other countries focus on prevention and have lower costs. We're paying for treatments instead of results. Our medical system is upside down and we're all paying the price for it, and it's going to get worse unless we do something about it now.