Fight Against The Healthcare Bill

Against public outcry, President Obama has continued to try and push through his healthcare reform. He does not realize how great of an impact this will have on the quality of our healthcare system. We are trying to get 500,000 signatures.

What's in the bill for health care Obama proposes? Here are a few things you need to know that will affect everyone.


1. Covering the uninsured: The White House says Obamas bill would extend coverage to 31 million people who are currently uninsured. The cost over 10 years would be an estimated $950 billionmore than the $872 billion the Senate proposes spending but less than the $1.05 trillion for the version the House passed last year.

2. Mandating health insurance: Like the bills the House and Senate approved last year, President Obama's plan would require almost everyone to be insured or pay a fine. The fines would be stiffer than those in the Senate version, but lower-income families would get greater tax credits to help them pay for their mandatory coverage.

3. Editing out 'political distractions': The "biggest political difference," says Ezra Klein in The Washington Post, is that President Obama's plan gets "rid of some of the distractions that were hurting the Senate bill," including a special tax break for labor unions and a deal helping Sen. Ben Nelson's state, Nebraska, pay for Medicaid extensions. Obama also added another element to the mix: a federal authority to crack down on insurance industry abuses and unfair rate increases.

4. No public option: Despite the fact that many Democrats still want to revive the public option, says Linda Feldmann in The Christian Science Monitor, Obama left out a proposal for a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers. "But his plan does set up an insurance marketplace, or 'exchange,' in which consumers can shop for coverage."

5. Higher taxes: To finance his changes, "President Obama proposes raising taxes even more than the Senate plan does," says Philip Klein in The American Spectator. Obama wants to hike the Medicare payroll tax for high-income workers by more than the Senate plan would, subject unearned income to an additional 2.9 percent tax, and "raise the proposed tax on drug makers by $10 billion, to a combined $33 billion over 10 years."

6. The Citizens of the U.S.A. as a whole should be able to vote on this. We deserve the right. Our choices are unfortunately being made by people making deals with other people to gain leverage all for themselves.