PRESIDENT Barack Obama has pushed for affordable healthcare arguing that he would not like US citizens to travel to India and Mexico for cheaper treatment.
Having recently launched his 2012 reelection bid, Obama has touted plans to pare back government outlays.
Among his proposals are reforms to Medicaid, which offers government medical help to the poor, and Medicare, which offers help for seniors, which would save $480bn (£292.78bn) by 2023. The reforms include using the government’s vast purchasing power to get lower prices for treatment and cut excessive medicine costs.
‘”My preference would be that you don’t have to travel to Mexico or India to get cheap healthcare. I’d like you to be able to get it right here in the United States of America that’s high quality,” Obama said at a community college in Virginia on Tuesday (April 19). He was responding to a question from the audience on increasing healthcare cost in the US.
“One of the things that we want to do as part of our healthcare reform package is – let’s start doing a better job of negotiating better prices for prescription drugs here in the United States so that you don’t feel like you’re getting cheated because you’re paying 30 per cent more or 20 per cent more than prescription drugs in Canada or Mexico,” Obama said.
“Before, we went on the path of you can go somewhere else to get your healthcare. Let’s work to see if we can reduce the costs of healthcare here in the United States of America. That’s going to make a big difference.
“And Medicare is a good place to start because Medicare is such a big purchaser that if we can start changing how the healthcare system works inside of Medicare, then the entire system changes. All the doctors, all the hospitals, they will all adapt to these best practices.
A recent poll by the Gallup organization found just 31 per cent of the US public backs a total overhaul of Medicare or making major changes to the program, even as retiring Baby Boomers swell its ranks and increase its cost.
Critics have charged that the Medicare approach is a recipe for cost controls by rationing care, and that the Medicaid plan would starve states of cash if an economic downturn forces more people to seek shelter in that program.
The two programs, enacted in 1965, reach nearly 100 million Americans and are critical parts of the fraying US social safety net, burdened by a surge in retirees and swollen by growing ranks of newly poor in the 2008 economic crisis.
