The Termination of CLASS Act by the white house administration.

The CLASS act also known as the Community Living Assistance Services which had been championed by the late senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, was designed to provide long term health insurance to the old, the poor and the disables.  This program which had been passed by congress in 2009 was a voluntary long-term care insurance program that would have been financed with premiums paid by workers through payroll deductions with no federal subsidy, and according to the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) this program would have save 70 billion dollars over 10 years, but since the law makers require this program to be solvent for 75 years, and as a voluntary program, if there aren't large number of (young and healthy) people willing to sign up, then premiums would then have to be set higher and higher to cover the likely costs of benefits, so therefore this program would be too costly to work and financially unsustainable.  This of course has given reasons to critics and politicians alike to play the blame game.

As part of the Affordable Care Act, this long-term health care program perhaps was not the best fiscally and viable plan as part of the reduction in our federal budget, but compare to other major ideas being debated this year, it was the better alternative.  While it’s true this plan would shield Medicare’s 48 millions current beneficiaries, raised premium on upper-income new beneficiaries, penalized if they also purchased private insurance, and pay higher deductible, at the same time cost cutting would also affect others such as, pharmaceutical, and hospital industries with “price control”, therefore affect the revenue and profitability and may result in jobs lost.  But as we know, reducing the deficit budget will always affect your finance or services by making you either pay more or get less.

As most of us already know that our country is financially broke, our social security already bankrupted, and our health care is in a state of crisis, and sooner or later we all will get old and will need some form of long-term assistance program in order to cover the high cost of health care.  So unless we believe that health care for everyone is an essential part of living in this country and therefore it is socially responsible for all of us to participate in a sound health care program where everyone contribute a fair share of insurance, for the alternative are some will live rich and healthy while others will live poor and die.

The United States, one of the richest country in the world and yet our health care system ranked worst among the richest nations and not because of the quality but accessibility and affordability.