Special Blog from John Birchall
With the passing of the Obama health care plans, no Republicans voted for it and many Democrats feel it did not go far enough, the US has allowed a further 32 million people access to a form of basic medical care.
As the above show those with little, if any real health cover tend to be from ethnic minority groups. In New Orleans on one side of a boulevard the life expectancy is 10 years more than on the other side – no prizes for guessing which racial group come second.
Some 15.3% of population (45.7 million people) do not have health insurance and are dependent on state, charity or other forms of health care.
In fairness to what are complicated numbers are perhaps not quite as bad as some paint them to be:
The US spent some $2.2tn (£1.36tn) on healthcare in 2007. That amounts to 16.2% of GDP - nearly twice the average of other countries in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).The US Census Bureau estimates that 46.3 million people in America, out of a population of 300 million, were uninsured in 2008.
However, this includes 9.2 million non-citizens and 18 million people who earn more than $50,000 a year.
It will be interesting to see just how the majority of people react to what is an ‘historic’ piece of legislation. For those living without medical insurance and the scheme will not be like the NHS, the US will continue to use private medical insurance but the premiums will be underwritten by the Federal government and those who have a pre-existing illness which often rules them out of health cover its ‘ the new beginning’. Whilst for The Republicans it is the beginning of a fight to the mid-term elections in November and eventually one of their people in the White House in 2012. Lots are at stake and one imagines that Obama will now switch his attention to growth and jobs.
An excellent blog to follow:
http://avuncularamerican.typepad.com/blog/
Written by Gerry Loftus, a former US diplomat