On November 4, United States citizens with the right to vote will not only be electing the nation’s next president, but they will also be outlining their own destiny and future for the following four years. Moreover, they will be casting their vote for a complete change in the U.S. administration; still, some things do not want utter altering or replacement, but merely improvement and reform.

One of the most controversial issues that have manged to sprinkle these past couple of months with heated debates concerns the nation’s health-care system, which everybody, from young to elderly, from poor to rich, deems as no longer being tailored to their needs in terms of insurance.

Unfortunately, this is the only point where all opinions converge: the need for reforming the system. From here, two major plans that aim at improving health-care in the U.S. have emerged, each striving to show Americans that what it proposes was exactly what they’ve been lacking until now. The two personalities who have come up with these aforementioned plans are the same two political figures running against each other in this year’s United States presidential elections: junior U.S. Senator from Illinois Barack Obama and senior U.S. Senator from Arizona John McCain. Both of whom have had to deal, although only theoretically so far, with the nation’s major issues where the health-care system is concerned.

First of all, there are currently approximately 45 million Americans who lack health insurance and thus run the risk of not getting proper medical care in due time to treat their conditions or even not receiving it at all.

Secondly, as the costs for health insurance rise, more and more people become unable to afford it from their incomes that are, in their majority, at a standstill, with no expectations to increase in the future.

Moreover, employer-based coverage greatly hinders workers, since it puts them off looking for a better job or changing employers, because they are not allowed to carry their insurance with them if they do so.

Finally, there is the medical services’ quality issue, which has been long known to be below par and incapable of keeping up with the progress that technology has made over the years.

Nevertheless, the main question Obama and McCain have tried to answer via their plans to reform the system is how to render health insurance affordable to all Americans.

Consequently, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee Barack Obama has put forward a plan that would require, on one hand, parents to purchase insurance for their children and on the other hand, medium and large companies to provide their employees with health care coverage or, if they failed to do that, to pay a tax that would help subsidize coverage for the yet uninsured.

In addition, he would prevent insurers from charging people who have pre-existing health conditions more money than they do other people. It is a known fact that many insurance companies on the U.S market often reject applicants by virtue of their pre-existing medical issues.

The Tax Policy Center (TPC), which is politically unbiased, has estimated that Obama’s plan would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 34 million, also reckoning that the federal costs for his proposed package of reforms would amount to $1.6 trillion over a period of ten years.

As for the GOP’s nominee John McCain, his plan would offer all Americans a tax credit of $2,500 for an individual or $5,000 for a family to allow them to get health insurance. Furthermore, he would encourage them to seek coverage outside employment, thus pushing more people towards private insurers. In addition, his plan would enable U.S. residents to get health insurance across state lines, in an attempt to render them to search for the best prices and benefits.

According to the TPC, McCain’s plan is expected to decrease the number of uninsured by only two million in 2018, while the federal costs have been estimated at $1.3 trillion over 10 years.