Also, as an aside, I find Obama's assumptions regarding health care rather troubling.
He claims to offer universal health care, yet does not propose a mandate, and even goes so far as to attack Hillary Clinton for forcing those who cannot afford it to get health insurance.
The claim of universal health care suggests that he believes that health insurance being affordable will mean everyone participates in it. This is unsupported by any facts or research, and seems overwhelmingly naive and idealistic. After all, who doesn't know people who are silly enough to prefer the immediate gratification of a new PS3 or car over the long-term security of health insurance?
Fortunately, Obama isn't quite as naive, as his attack on Clinton shows. Clearly, he realizes that there are people who won't be getting health insurance.
This creates a problem, however: the uninsured.
A lack of insurance has two major results.
First, the uninsured poor are likely to forgo medical treatment until they truly have no other alternative left. By that time, however, many diseases which could have been treated fairly cheaply and efficiently will have progressed to the point where treatment is either extremely expensive or futile. (right now, this probably causes
thousands of preventable deaths a year in the US)
Second, since the uninsured ill are likely to receive treatment anyway, often with no means of paying for it, they are a burden on the health care system as a whole, raising prices for those who do have insurance.