Blog Post 1 on health care

Although I am not the most educated on the heathcare system, I do have some personal connections that help me understand the severity of the problem.  My family and I are currently having issues with CHIP, childrens health insurance for Pennsylvanians, which is caused by unemployment in my family along with the lack of health benefits for my guardian's job.  My mom is currently trying to find a more effective job ironically in a hospital where better health insurance benefits are offered.  To my understanding, I am currently either uninsured or loosely protected with health insurance which worries my mother and infuriates me.  If i were to suffer extreme injuries in say a car accident (I recently started driving) would my family be able to realistically afford treatment for me?! I don't need to worry about that! I just need to figure out what Obama's healthcare bill is proposing exactly, because there has not been a clear unbiased explaination by anyone, so hopefully congress can figure it out.  If my personal experiance is a big deal to me, It makes me wonder about how other Americans deal with the same problem, without the perks of having benefits from a job. I found these interesting statistics at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39215770/ns/health-health_care/t/number-uninsured-americans-hits-record-high/ :

In a reflection of the battered economy, the number of people without health insurance rose sharply last year to 50.7 million — an all time high — according to data released Thursday by the Census Bureau.

That pushed the rate of uninsured Americans to 16.7 percent last year from 15.4 percent in 2008, when there were 46.3 million uninsured. It was one of the largest single year increases since the Census starting tracking the figure in 1987.