Getting Deeper in the Red. What the National Health Care Reform will do.

Did you know that in 1919 post WWI, the United States was a creditor nation? That simply means we were loaning money and exporting more than we took in. Did you know that the United States is now a debtor nation? America is in the red; we owe more than we are making and we owe other countries such as China a ton of money for the loans they have supplied.

What has happened to the days that we had money and people weren’t scared? During the 1920’s just before the stock market crashed America was living the good life after the war. Instead of worrying about spending money we wanted countries like France and Great Britain to pay us back for all we did for them during the war. President Coolidge wanted to focus on raising tariffs to make the country even more Pro-American. With the raising the tariffs, taxes were lowered and ridiculous spending was not seen.

President Reagan did the same thing; he ended the Cold War with the Pro-American mentality. Now with President Obama the country is going through an awful recession (not as bad as the recession in 1980) which economists say started back in 2007. Instead of lowering taxes and not spending, which is a proven method, President Obama has spent more money in his first couple of months than any other President has done in the past.

With that being said, the health care issue is the next step in the President’s administration. Many people, around 53% of Americans (so says the AP poll), do not want this health care reform bill as of right now. The reason we see many Independents, some Democrats, and most Republicans turning away from the current health care reform bill is because they are scared it is just mass spending like the stimulus package that has not worked but put the country in more debt. Now before you get mad, stay with me for a bit longer.

Here are several reasons why I am against this certain bill. I am all about patient’s rights and want patients to get the best possible coverage. President Obama has promised that people who have nothing will now be eligible to receive health care coverage, regardless; that is the public option. He has also promised that if you already have health insurance you can either keep what you have or change over to the public option. That seems fair, you can choose between the coverage you already have or, have the public option. People that already have nothing look at this health care reform and it looks pretty good, but to those who already have health insurance this looks a little sketchy.

I will admit that nobody really likes insurance companies anyways, mainly because insurance companies run as a business and we all know how that works. The reason this looks a bit sketchy to some people that already have health insurance is the point that they will have to pay more taxes on it. People do not want their taxes to raise more than they already are but if this bill passes, the people that already have health insurance will have to pay more taxes on this to pay for the nationalized health care. This sucks but that is the only way the national health care will be paid for.

I also have a personal story of why I am not in favor of the health care reform bill. My mother’s cousin’father in-law that lives in Canada. Well he had a life/death situation where he needed surgery. Canada has national health care so there should have been no problem right? Wrong. The doctors told him that he has 14 months to live if he did not get the surgery but he could not get the surgery because the waiting line was 18 months to have the surgery. Now how is someone supposed to wait 18 months when they have 14 months to live? So, Mary’s father in-law came to America and got the surgery done and paid $250,000 for the health care. Now he is going to live the rest of his life, however long it may be, and did not force our country to pay for his bills. So with national health care there is the potential of waiting too long for a serious medical problem.

My final concern is how it will be paid for. Like I have stated before taxes will be the main way it will be paid for. The money that we borrow from other countries will also be a major factor too. This week alone, America will borrow circa $75 billion. When we borrow that much money a week how are we supposed to pay it back? How are we supposed to pay for this health care system? Do we keep on borrowing money or do we tax our citizens more?
These are all questions to ponder and I will leave you with this: when the budget for 2009 comes out in September, it is projected that America will be $2 trillion in debt. We can only hope that our elected officials read and understand what they are actually voting for. It would be nice for a change that the people in Washington thought about the average American.