STAFF EDIT: A healthy compromise

As President Barack Obama’s Wednesday speech on restructuring health care approaches, Americans wait in uneasy anticipation to hear his most definite plans yet regarding the reform. Since the beginning of his campaign, Obama has been none too black-and-white about his plans to reform, claiming instead that he was open to many alternatives and would explore all of them. Now, nine months into his presidency, Obama is finally releasing a more specific assertion of how he wants to evolve this nation’s crippled health care system.

Facing both a divided congress and a divided citizenry, Obama will do well to favor a revised version of what legislators are calling ‘the public option.’ Under this system, the government will step in to provide federally subsidized health care coverage for small businesses and individuals who cannot independently afford private insurance. Skeptics worry that this system will altogether upend the already-mangled financial web created by private insurances and companies related to them, and results will be more chaotic than ever.

The alternative version of ‘the public option,’ penned by Sen. Olympia Snowe,’ R-Maine, lessens the responsibility given to the government, and keeps private insurance companies at the forefront. Under Snowe’s plan, the government may step in only if private insurers cannot provide affordable options to small businesses and individuals within a set amount of years. It is this compromise of government aid and private accountability that will best ease America toward health care recovery.

Not only is Snowe’s option a sound way for Obama to create a bipartisan compromise of conflicting political ideas, but it is also a way for the government to maintain its ultimate position as a watchdog over private enterprises without completely taking them over. By simply instituting a system by which the government has absolute control of health care, the traditional democratic relationship between government and its people becomes defunct. But if Obama waits longer for another option, this immediate and very significant national problem will only further ferment as it sits on Washington’s backburner.’

It’s no great accusation to call the current health care system in this country corrupt. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be faltering worse today than it ever has. Health care has become indulgent in some ways ‘- patients are overprescribed and over-tested ‘- and paltry in others, considering the millions of uninsured Americans who cannot afford it. But definite reform doesn’t have to be absolute. A compromise, a bipartisan effort and the right strokes of the president’s pen are the few simple measures needed to gently and effectively correct a very sick nation.