Title:
Seeking Opinions on Health Reform, and Getting an
Earful
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Economics Report.
See text below
Text:
President Obama is letting Congress write the
details of his plan for what he calls health
insurance reform. Congress was on vacation in
August.
But members held what are known as town hall
meetings around the country to hear reaction. And
they have been getting an earful from crowds for and
against the plan.
The president, at his own meetings, pointed back to
the nineteen nineties. He said: "Every time we come
close to passing health insurance reform, the
special interests fight back with everything they've
got."
Some objections are based on cost estimates from an
independent agency, the Congressional Budget Office.
Also, some people said they did not have enough
details of the plan to be able to make up their
minds.
Two goals are to expand health insurance to millions
of Americans who do not have it, and to control
rising costs for those who do. A public insurance
plan was proposed to compete with private insurance
companies.
Republicans and other critics said the Democrats'
idea of reforms would lead to socialized health
care. But one of the first groups to support the
administration was the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America.
PhRMA spent millions of dollars on advertising to
support the plan. The industry group has already
promised to cut drug costs by eighty billion dollars
over ten years.
Critics want more. Some liberal lawmakers have
proposed measures such as letting the government
negotiate lower drug prices. But under the PhRMA
deal, the chances for additional cost-saving
measures are unclear.
Drugs that need a doctor's prescription became a
bigger part of the debate over health care costs in
two thousand three. Congress and President George W.
Bush added prescription drugs to the Medicare
insurance program for older Americans. That raised
the costs of Medicare, which represented fifteen
percent of the federal budget last year.
But PhRMA says drug costs are only ten percent of
all health care costs in America. It also points out
the high costs of developing new drugs.
Yet researchers from Stanford University say new
treatments are often no better than existing ones,
but are almost always more costly. They suggested a
way to lower prices. They said the government should
require drug makers to state how new medications
compare with existing ones.
And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
