The concerns with the old Health care system as it was, was the overall cost that it was costing the nation. If you were to go by the figures the US ends up spending almost more than $2.2 trillion on healthcare. And, this was in the year 2007. This spending has substantially increased. This means that it spends almost 16 to 17% of its GDP on health care. This is far, far too much when compared to what other countries in the same league spend. It is almost double that of other countries.

Another thing is the number of people who are covered under the insurance schemes. There were almost 46 million people uninsured out of a population of 300 million. These figures are for the year 2008. This includes non-citizens at 9.2 million and the 18 million people who earn more than $50,000 a year and are considered in the top bracket.

At the same time taking into consideration all the people who are insured, they are all not adequately insured. The out of pocket expenditure that the person has to incur if they were to fall ill makes them go bankrupt. Almost half of the bankruptcies are due to heavy medical expenditure and rising medical costs.

The rising health costs have been cited as one of the major reasons for the US budget to show a deficit for two consecutive years, 2007 and 2008. This was as it was until the changes were proposed. The new Healthcare reform bill that has been passed will showcase changes in a few major instances.

• Firstly, the regulations on the insurers will be far more stringent than what it has already been.
• Secondly, there is bound to be health insurance made compulsory. Something like a car insurance.
• Thirdly, there are going to be insurance exchanges that are going to be set up for people who are not covered by their employers.

There will be plenty of subsidies and cost cuts that will be offered to people who aren’t able to afford medical aid. This will differ in individual case.

The Medicare program is going to be revamped and all the wastage is going to be stopped. This money saved will be able to go on and fund the reforms that have been suggested.
The crux of the matter of the new healthcare system is that it is going to be made affordable for one and all.

This will enable everyone to be able to participate in it. Also, there will be greater measures on health insurers and they will be made far more accountable then they already are. This will go on to decrease the federal deficit in the next ten years by a substantial amount of $100 billion.

The new health reform has to strongly tackle waste, fraud and abuse of the system if it has to be successful and move on from the stage that it is in right now.