The Stimulus Package: Where's the Health Insurance?

Like a lot of people, I've been trying to figure out the stimulus package that was rushed through the Congress, and of course I"m having trouble. It's hard to comprehend numbers that large. And the details are awfully vague.

But one thing is really bugging me: Why didn't President Obama include national health insurance--which I seem to remember him promising us--in the stimulus package?

Heck, even CHINA--you know, that Third World country with over a billion people--recently passed a stimulus package to help its struggling economy, and universeal health insurance was part of the package. 

According to a commentary in Sunday's Honolulu Advertiser, "China deserves high marks for acting quickly on the global economic crisis. ... Some measures, such as a plan to invest $123 billion in universal health insurance over the next three years, could lay the foundation for a social safety net that would help establish a broad Chinese middle class ..."

So where's our universal health care, President Obama? If China can do it, we certainly can. 

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

Comments

[Bdogg]

$123 bln is for health subsidies, not even close to what I think your definition is of "universal" health insurance. First, on a per-capita basis, it's not much. Second this is just one part of a series of slow increases in subsidies since 2003. If you look at the data, not much in the healthcare industry in China has changed since then.

[Bud Quinlan]

I don't know what Pres. Obama's current stance on health care is. I know he was for single payer back in '03 (which I am in favor of), but now is not.

I'm in Massachusetts where we have what I consider to be a Rube Goldberg contraption approach to health care: state plans for people below a certain income level, employer provided insurance for most (maybe?) workers, and a strong market for near-scam types of coverage enabled by a state law that requires individuals to have coverage. If you make too much to qualify for the state care (i.e., self employed, employed at a firm that doesn't offer health care), you have to buy your own.

I really fear this may be the approach foisted on us. I hope I'm wrong, though.

[Anon]

Obama didn't promise national health care. That was Clinton. Obama said that all children should have health care and that health care should be affordable for Americans, which he said would eventually lead to all Americans getting insured.
In addition to asking Congress to set aside $634 billion for health care reform, Obama requested more than $6 billion for cancer research at NIH. The stimulus package signed designates $150 billion to health care related spending. It gets slightly more specific (still pretty vague I agree) here: http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2009/02/150-billion-of-stimulus-headed-to-health-care/
Hope that was helpful. We won't see how these things will be enacted until plans have been drawn up and procedures have been set, but at least the money is supposedly there.