A West Virginia Perspective: The Future of Health Care

As the campaign trail for the 2008 election continues, the country finds itself looking to West Virginia to see how the race progresses. More importantly, the issue of health care could become a rising issue, as the increases costs of medical expenses and health care continue to rise.

John McCain proposes the least drastic change. He does not have any desire to provide universal health care for all citizens of the United States. Rather, he prefers to allow citizens to have their own choice whether or not they wish to provide themselves with health care. However, he does recognize the overpriced and high costs of insurance and medical expenses in general and wishes to remedy the situation. He currently has suggested issuing a $2,500 tax relief to single individuals and a $5,000 refund to families to relieve the cost of health care for those who decide to obtain it. Ultimately, McCain believes the problem lies with the American health care system and the simple fact that it costs too much. The industry itself needs to improve not the system.

On the other side of the spectrum, Hilary Clinton proposes a radical solution to the health care issue. Essentially, she believes the key to insuring every citizen obtains health care is to require every citizen to have some form of health care. Ideally, she wishes create a government backed health care plan similar to those available through Medicare. In order to fund the program, Clinton plans to require large corporations to provide health care for its employees. Similarly, small businesses and low income families will need to supply health care for themselves. In order to support this expenditure, she suggests tax breaks to alleviate the burden for small businesses and low income families. In essence, all citizens would be required to possess some form of health care. Citizens with private health care would be left alone, however; citizens without any form of health care will have to obtain some form of private or government sponsored heath care.