While the looming economic recession may have displaced the country’s broken health care system and the Iraq war as the top concern for Americans in recent weeks, universal, affordable access to health care remains a vital issue for voters. Many groups from the labor movement and health care advocates even to the Obama campaign have linked the need for health care reform to economic recovery.

This past week more than 5,000 physicians endorsed Barack Obama’s plan for health care reform. In a press statement, Doctors for Obama-Biden 2008 described the Obama plan as “the first step in ensuring that all Americans have access to a quality, affordable and secure health care.”

With skyrocketing costs totaling at least $2 trillion annually, 45 million uninsured Americans and many millions more with inadequate health care coverage, health care is an immediate issue for most people. “Furthermore,” the statement read, “the on-going fiscal crisis gripping the nation makes the need for reforming the health care system even more compelling.”

Doctors are backing Obama because in addition to the decline in affordable access, the quality of health care is also suffering. Emergency rooms are overcrowded and funding for research and development for serious illnesses has dried up.
Both the Economic Policy Institute and a separate study published in Health Affairs have indicated that under McCain’s plan as many as 27 million Americans would lose their employment-based health insurance and be forced to deal alone with private insurers for expensive and often inadequate health care coverage.