History has been made. The first African-American president has been elected to lead the United States into a future of change, but the future of our country is facing an extreme amount of challenges and it will not be an easy task.
President-elect Barack Obama ran on a platform that aimed to help the middle and lower classes, and with the current economic situation, citizens hope Obama will bring some much needed relief to their budgets.
As the cost of food rises and unemployment soars to 6.5 percent, Americans are being forced to make harsh cutbacks on everyday expenses, and are looking towards the government and policies to change. The current minimum wage in Pennsylvania is $7.15, no amount of money someone could raise a family on.
For the 204,000 people who lost jobs in the month of October, how will they survive? One of the first issues Obama should tackle should be to extend unemployment benefits from 26 to 39 weeks.
An expense that is often cut by those who are facing financial difficulty is health insurance. The cost of health insurance is too high and on average 4,000 people are losing jobs each day and the health care benefits that come along with it.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 47 million people were without health insurance in 2006, and as the number of layoffs rises so does the amount of citizens left without health insurance for themselves and their families.
Despite the amount of people living without health insurance in the United States, the country spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, countries that provide health insurance to all their citizens, according to the National Coalition on Heath Care. Why do we as a country allow so many to struggle without insurance? Those of us who do have insurance often find the large costs a great burden.
In the presidential debate, President-elect Obama sharply differed from Sen. John McCain on this issue. Obama called health care a right?something that belongs to each and every person?while McCain called it a responsibility?which is the way it currently is?up to each person to figure out how to be covered by insurance.
As students, most of us have not had to think much about issues like this. We may not even have understood all the complex ins and outs of health care during the campaign, but pretty soon, within three and a half years for even freshmen, we will each have to face the issue of health care. Do we think it’s a right for every citizen to have health care, the way it is in all of the developed world, or is it up to each person to find the way to pay for his or her own health care?$4,400 for a single person or $12,000 for a family of four?
Cabrini understands the struggles of our nation and the dilemma that millions of Americas are faced with and that is why this year’s Cabrini Day topic is health care. Today, Nov. 13, the Cabrini community is recognizing importance of the health care system.
