Translated material
Political illness
US lawmakers can't agree on health care reform
The US Senate today begins consideration of a plan for radical reform of the healthcare system. These changes were one of Barack Obama's main campaign promises. The hefty 2,074-page document struggled through procedural hurdles at the committee level late last week. All 40 Republican senators opposed it. But Democrats had the 60 votes needed to debate the bill in the Senate.Under the new law, every American must have health insurance, similar to the mandatory insurance that every car owner has. The state will strengthen its role in this area and offer its own insurance options to compete with private companies. With 118 new oversight agencies, commissions and programs, skeptics fear a hulking bureaucratic monster could emerge in the United States. To carry out the reform, it is necessary to find $848 billion, and yet the US financial system is already burdened with a national debt of $14 trillion. In order to finance the bill, new taxes are envisaged, mainly on the highly paid part of the population - on single Americans with an annual income of at least 100 thousand . dollars and for families with income over 150 thousand dollars.
Republicans, who successfully defeated a previous Democratic attempt to reform health care under Bill Clinton a decade and a half ago, are determined to torpedo Obama's plan. Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander says the bill is "full of flaws and imposes enormous additional costs on states." In his opinion, as soon as the people find out about this, the reform plan will “collapse under its own weight.”
About a dozen conservative Democratic senators also reject the president's plan. As a matter of party discipline, after much delay, they voted for general debate in the Senate, but did not cease to emphasize that they would seek amendments. "If a lot of the articles in it remain as they are now, I will never vote for it," warns Nebraska's Ben Nelson. He is echoed by Joseph Lieberman, a nominally independent senator from Connecticut who typically votes with Democrats. If the bill retains the state insurance provision, he will also not support it.
However, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insist that the presence of a public insurance option is the cornerstone of the entire bill and cannot be negotiated. And this dispute is far from the only one. Even if the Democrats manage to push their plan through the Senate through concessions and compromises, it is unclear how it will be reconciled with the version adopted by a slight majority in the House of Representatives. That plan has a number of differences from the project being considered in the Senate.
Everyone in America understands that the current health care system is bad and close to collapse. But politicians cannot agree on ways to reform. The complexity of the projects, bitter disputes and mutual accusations between the two parties intimidated those to whom the reforms were originally addressed. Americans, especially older generations, no longer want change for fear that things will get worse. Hopes for President Barack Obama are fading before our eyes. His approval rating in public opinion polls has fallen below 50%, and no more than 38% of voters approve of his health care reform.