Health Care Reform

Health care reform is the term used to describe a significant change in policy regarding the delivery of health care and the related insurance associated with delivery. The United States is currently in the process of reforming its health care system on the initiative of the Obama Administration, as this was a major part of his, and his party's platform during the 2008 presidential election campaign.http://www.healthreform.gov/ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on March 21, 2010 on the same bill passed by the U.S. Senate in December 2009, along with a reconciliation bill which contains changes to the legislation.

Once the Senate had voted in favor of the reconciliation bill, it was sent to Pres. Obama.http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/03/sundays-best-the-big-vote/1 who on the morning of March 23, 2010 signed the health care overhaul bill into law.http://www.newser.com/story/84033/obama-signs-health-reform-into-law.html The Senate is expected to work on a set of corrections later in the week.

The last major legislative push for health care reform occurred during the Bill Clinton administration. This effort was defeated, as the health care industry was, for the most part against any changes in the current system and lobbied heavily for defeat of any proposed legislation.

Most people in the U.S. have private health insurance and most of those people get the private insurance through their employer, with the employer, to varying degrees subsidising the employee's portion of the premium. Many others are covered by government-run insurance programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. However, there is still a significant portion of the population which is not covered by employer-run health insurance and also do not qualify for the government-run programs.

There has been ongoing debate since the progressive movement in the early 1900s about what the government's role in health care for its citizens should be. Some advocate a national health insurance program, while on the other end of the spectrum some fiercely oppose expansion fo the government's role in protecting the welfare of its citizens beyond the already entrenched Medicare and Medicaid programs. There has even been some privatization of these programs in recent years. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html