Health Care Bill May Reduce Need for Personal Loans

Health-care relief may be on its way

Throughout the recession many consumers have been using personal loans to fund their health care. There may be some relief on the way as a new health care bill is said to be on the verge of completion. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is confident that the bill will be passed. In a statement released earlier this week, he stated that the new revised bill should be ready for review by next week.

Part of the hold-up on the legislation came in the form of opposition mainly from Ben Nelson, the Senate’s most conservative Democrat. With his vote, the landmark health care reform bill would have the 60 votes needed for it to pass. Because his vote was so crucial, it gave him quite a bit of leverage as he met with other members of the Senate to sort through the proposed bill.

The health care bill

President Obama is hoping to insure the millions of Americans who are currently living without health care insurance. Many of them are unemployed, but not as many as was first projected by experts. Clancy Parks, analysts for MoneyMaker.com said, “It was thought that the employment rate would skyrocket the group without health care, and it did, but research has shown that there was a huge pool of uninsured prior to the recession and job loss.” Many people lived without insurance due to health care costs. When they were unable to afford health care, they cut it out of their expenses altogether. The recession caused people to scale back on all bills that were not immediately necessary, and unfortunately health care was viewed as one of them.

A reduction in the need for credit and personal loans

The health care bill is supposed to help consumers fund their health care without the use of credit or personal loans. In essence it is supposed to extend coverage to those who don’t have any health care, prohibit the industry from denying insurance due to pre-existing conditions and slow the rate of growth of medical spending throughout the US. The bill will cost about $1 trillion over the next decade and much of the funds will be spent on lowering the dollars Americans would otherwise have to come up with out of their own pockets for health care.

Legislators are working overtime

Due to the large number of uninsured in America, it’s no wonder the Senate is working aggressively to restructure health care into a workable plan. Senator Mitch McConnel said, “This massive piece of legislation that seeks to restructure one-sixth of our economy is being written behind closed doors without input from anyone in an effort to jam it past not only the Senate but the American people before Christmas.”

The future of health care

In the future, health care is hoped to be available for all insurable Americans. President Obama is working to push the legislation through quickly and see 2010 as a year when health care is available to all. It’s necessary to find a solution because thus far consumers have had to manage their own health care by whatever means necessary. Many are uninsured, many use personal loans and many use savings to fund health care costs. The President’s initiative should be ready by early 2010 and time will tell how effective it really is.