I think Obama's idea to implement a government sponsored insurance plan which will be available in the \"exchange program\" is actually a savvy idea. Though many citizens cry for a single payer system, this is not politically feasible. Adhering to the lessons of the failed Clinton Health Care Plan requires keeping new health care policy from being overly contentious. Any plan as comprehensive as the one Obama is offering will surely encompass many different views and fierce opposition resulting from these disparate views, so it is important that the Obama administration make compromises if the plan is ever to be adopted. A single payer system would prod the embers under far too many interests for it to be considered viable at this point.

Obama was right in saying that staying our current course will result in an ever-burgeoning deficit; so it must be that health care is reformed and done so in a comprehensive way. Therefore, I see the exchange program wherein private insurance competes with a government sponsored plan as an important stepping stone. This will provide the most needy with coverage that they currently are unable to receive, allow us to keep a competitive market, and lower everyone's insurance premiums while at the same time taking some of the power away from the insurance companies — which are often concerned with profits rather than the lives of those humans who need coverage the most. Of course, it does not go as far as the single payer plan (cutting the insurance companies out of the deal) but it manages to accomplish some of what single payer aims to provide while, presumably, keeping some of the more vehemently controversial issues at bay.

A substantial amount of money is wasted when uninsured people go to the ER. Hospitals are required to admit these people, and the federal government is burdened with the funding. A hidden perk in Obama's idea comes from the fact that it proposes to provide insurance to millions of people — the CBO estimates 39 million who are currently uninsured — thus alleviating this problem almost in its entirety. Why?  Well it's obvious; those who used to arrive in ER’s uninsured will now likely be insured.

The biggest albatross in the plan is the funding. The Obama administration is going to have to banter, barter, and bounce through a myriad of interests and their constituencies and figure out how to come up with $1 trillion to feed this massive beast. Just like Clinton’s plan, it will very likely arise that the president once again has bitten off more than he can chew.

However, it may be the case that Obama has even more support in congress than did Clinton, and these proposals have been around a bit longer. I think Clinton's health plan failed for several reasons: it was too big, congress was splintered, and health care reform of this magnitude was unprecedented, among others. Though Obama's proposal may be just as vast, he presides over a strongly democratic congress that, presumably, has learned the lessons from Clinton's democratic congress. They may be more apt to back Obama's plan than Clinton's because they saw how Clinton's failed when they did not maintain their solidarity. With the economic climate at hand, politics seem to be moving somewhat faster than their usual geologic pace. The collective mentality of America seems to have changed as a result of the drastic economic climate; congress sits on the precipice of a time where we have a monumental debt like none ever before witnessed in history. Congress members and laymen alike know that the health care system has played a big role in creating this debt, and its reformulation or the failure to do so will largely determine how this debt is dealt with or not dealt with. So, I think that Obama's plan being adopted will rely heavily on the estimates from the CBO and the plan's likelihood of providing for savings on down the road. If the CBO sees that the Obama plan will result in savings in health care spending, then it will likely gain in popularity, and will therefore be more likely to pass.