At the Families USA Health Action conference last Thursday, 2008 presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) called for universal healthcare in the U.S. by no later than 2012.
Obama was the first to set a timeframe for such a goal, though his party rivals, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) also support universal healthcare.
Obama, who serves on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he is currently working with experts to draft legislation for universal healthcare.
"Universal healthcare must not be a question of whether, it must be a question of how," Obama said. "We have the ideas, the resources and now we need the will. There is no reason why we can't accomplish that."
Obama noted that 60 years have passed since President Truman called for universal healthcare. "Plans that tinker and halfway measures now belong to yesterday," Obama said. Specifically, Obama pointed to President Bush's proposal for tax reform to support the purchase of private health insurance. Obama called this plan "interesting," but said it will do little to guarantee coverage or lower costs. "It falls into the category of tinkering and halfway measures," Obama said.
Obama decried how politics have stymied plans to provide healthcare, something he considers a right of every American.
According to Obama, even former opponents to healthcare reform have begun to notice that the healthcare crisis in the U.S. "is not only morally offensive, but is economically untenable."
Obama cited these statistics:
• Family premiums are up by 87 percent over the last five years, growing five times faster than workers wages
• Deductables are up 50 percent
• Nearly 11 million insured Americans spent a quarter of their income on healthcare last year
• More than half of all family bankruptcies today are cause by healthcare bills
• One half of all small businesses have dropped coverage because of high costs
• Family premiums are $922 higher because of the cost of the uninsured
"The skeptics must be living somewhere else, because when you see what healthcare is doing to our families, when you see what the crisis is doing to our economy, to our country, you realize that what is too costly is caution. It's inaction that is too risky; doing nothing," Obama said. "It is time to act. This isn't a problem of money. It's a problem of will; a failure of leadership."