Thursday, October 2, 2008

Health Care and Insurance Reform Delayed Due to Economy?

By Ethan Calvin

A conference in Orlando, Florida had health care experts, politicians, doctors and economists had talks about the poor economy's effect on health care and insurance reform. This was reported in the Miami Herald.

Usually these conferences only point out that we all don't agree on health care and insurance reform. This seemed to be the case here, as well.

A democratic strategist, James Carville, stated that health reforms would probably have to wait. Carville's argument was that the federal government will have enough of their time spent trying to save Wall Street, so health reform will need to wait it out until the economy is better.

Karl Rove, republican strategist, disagrees, surprisingly. Rove states that John McCain's health insurance reform, which is proposed as tax credits and deregulated markets, does not need a good economy to work.

Countering, a representative for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said tough times like these are when we really need reform. Florida Governor Charlie Crist reasoned that state governments should take responsibility for health care and insurance reform. Governor Crist recently championed a Florida health insurance law that offers affordable health plans with limited benefits. "There's such a difficulty getting anything done in Washington," said Crist. And there's certainly a lot of truth to that. - 15275

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