Where to Go From Here

It may seem like there is no aspect of our country that isn’t an utter mess right now. Big banks are being bailed out, the auto industry is flailing like a car in the river and as we see here, the health care industry is rapidly falling ill to this economic virus. Is there any hope? I feel that there is. We have a new President with new ways of thinking around how health care and insurance should be offered, and while I don’t hang my hat on things changing immensely and immediately after the old administration departs, I do think they are on course to change for the better. How much worse can it get? The road to change has to be one we travel.

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Health care providers have to have seen this coming. It’s not like we woke up one morning and saw “Hey, the country’s in a recession.” The economic downturn was gradual and glaringly obvious, and people and organizations everywhere did their best to make preparations. However, many states throughout the United States are preparing to make drastic and unprecedented cuts in health care funds, and this couldn’t be coming at a worse time for consumers. The unemployment rate in December was 7.2%, which was up from November’s 6.8%. There doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel any time soon (you can’t help but feel bad for the complete mess that Barack Obama is inheriting) and it is important to know how these health care cuts might affect you and your family.

Health Services for Poor First to Go

Obama has been promising since the inception of his campaign that he wanted to extend health care coverage to include more affordable and widely available health insurance to those in lower income brackets. Now, before he has even been sworn in as the next President of the United States, states are already tossing programs like these out the window. Many states have been gung-ho in the fight to expand their coverage for the working poor, but with the state of the economy the way it is, these once hopeful programs are getting the boot. And the working poor are now becoming more steadily just the “poor,” as jobs continued to get slashed across industries.

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