Although the new administration seems to have gotten the ball rolling as far as changes to policies go, the future is still looking pretty bleak according to many analysts. The number of uninsured Americans right now stands at 45 million people in 2009. If there aren’t significant changes made in health insurance policies, that number will skyrocket to 54 million uninsured people by the year 2019. That would mean that over 17% of our entire population would be without health insurance. In this post, we’ll look at what people are calling for in terms of change, and what members of our government have to say to the President.

What Are the Problems with Current Health Policies?

The increase in the numbers of uninsured would be driven by the costly insurance premiums whose prices rise faster than incomes can keep up with them. If people simply can’t afford to keep paying health insurance premiums, they’re going to let them go and join the ranks of the uninsured. Many health treatments are deemed wasteful and unnecessary, and people pay well over what they should for these services.

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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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