Historic Election Affects American's Health Care

Make an Informed Choice that Fits Your Needs

Oct 31, 2008 Kathy Quan

The U.S election on November 4, 2008, will be historic in its own right as Americans choose either the first black man as President or a woman as Vice President.

The effects of this election go far beyond these points as the economy and health care play a huge role in the platforms for each candidate. Some of the fallout from the economic downturn includes such issues as stress, and financial issues affecting whether or not Americans actually seek the care they need.

As hospitals and other facilities struggle to turn profits, they will cut valuable staff. In a system that is already suffering from a shortage of nurses, these facilities can little afford to create even more workplace challenges for nurses and other health care workers to provide quality health care.

Nursing Shortage

The shortage of nurses has already proved to impact patient care in the form of long waiting periods in emergency rooms and the lack of beds in hospitals. Many states have laws dictating the nurse-to-patient ratios which cannot be exceeded. These ratios affect the number of beds a hospital unit can fill at any one time. If nursing staff has to be cut, the ability to meet the needs of a community can be seriously impacted.

Nurses represent the backbone of the health care team and how the nursing shortage is viewed and what plans are put into motion to help ensure that more nurses are educated are additional issues for voters to consider carefully. Under the present administration, the funding for nursing workforce development has been cut each year when it has been clearly established that in order to meet the needs of the public, this funding needs to be increased each year.

Cost of Health Care Affects Economy

The high cost of health care is one of the biggest issues the next administration will face in trying to gain some control of the failing economy. Uninsured Americans place a huge burden on the economy as well, in particular the 9 million children who lack health care insurance. Many of these uninsured children represent a large faction of special needs children whose coverage under the government SCHIP program has been cut year after year by the present administration.

The high cost of medications and care must be contained and not allowed to continue to grow exponentially. The issue of uninsured and underinsured must be addressed if the financial crisis is to be contained. Americans are filing bankruptcy at astounding rates due to unpaid medical bills.

Proposed Health Care Plans

The health care plans proposed by each of the Presidential candidates differ widely in how to provide insurance for all Americans as well as how to best control the skyrocketing costs of health care. For those who have chronic or catastrophic illnesses, the choice of plans offers another issue: that of coverage for preexisting illness.

Americans have a challenge to elect a President who best represents their political party, but who also can provide the leadership necessary to establish a health care system that will provide for the increasing needs of the public. These needs are changing and growing each year, and clearly the present system is failing to meet those needs, and will be unable to do so in the future.

Perhaps the most historic part of this election is that Americans will vote for a candidate who best meets their economic and health care needs and not necessarily their long term political party affiliation. The most important point is that Americans need to vote, and they need to make informed choices on their ballots.

The copyright of the article Historic Election Affects American's Health Care in Health Field is owned by Kathy Quan . Permission to republish Historic Election Affects American's Health Care in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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