Obama says problems with health care are “part of the emergency”

President-elect Obama is signalling his intent to make health reform a top priority during the first year of his administration.

Speaking December 11th at a news conference in Chicago, Obama picked Tom Daschle as his choice to lead Health and Human Services and direct a new White House Office of Health Reform.  A part of Daschle's job, according to the president-elect, is to secure "affordable, accessible health care for every single American."

Obama also stated that health system reform "has to be intimately woven into our overall economic recovery plan.  It's not something that we can put off because we are in an emergency.  This is part of the emergency." 

Daschle, who served in the United States Senate before losing his seat in the 2004 elections, said "our growing costs are unsustainable and the plight of the uninsured is unconscionable."

Writing in The American Prospect, Joanne Kenen and Sarah Axeen highlight the cost of doing nothing.  "Health-insurance inflation will continue to outpace wages; the average cost of an employer-sponsored insurance plan for a family would reach $24,000 in 2016, an 84 percent increase from today. At least half of U.S households would need to spend more than 45 percent of their income to pay for insurance -- while the coverage itself would be sparser. Health costs would further undermine the ability of U.S. manufacturers to compete internationally, threaten the stability of U.S. jobs, and deepen the burden on local, state, and federal budgets."

While activists typically focus on issues of access, quality and equity, what is really driving the problem of health care to the top of the agenda is cost.   "It's an economic issue. The combination of health-care costs on working people with other economic burdens -- mortgage, rent, fuel -- are just devastating," said Drew E. Altman, president and CEO of the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation.

Most are agreed that what will make-or-break health system reform in 2009 will be the extent of citizen pressure on Congress.  If small business owners, unions and health care consumers stand together in vigorous support of fundamental reform, the resistance of the insurance and pharmacuetical lobbies will be defeated.  If any one of those crucial sectors takes a pass, this moment of opportunity will be lost. It's in our hands.