The confirmation of the new Secretary of Health and Human Services brings Kathleen Sebelius to the Cabinet, she’s a former Kansas Governor. The new Secretary will command the FDA, the CDC, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

She was voted in on an approval of 65 to 31, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. What has been mentioned previously as the negatives were Secretary Sebelius’s stand on abortion, it’s pro choice, and that she has an association with a physician who does abortions.

The nomination approval comes with an extra five votes as she gained a few Republican supporters. Since she made it to the Cabinet, it increases the number of strong insiders for President Obama who mean to revise the health care area this year.

The newest cabinet member, who is a Democrat, has similar views to President Obama on health care. Secretary Sebelius will produce a similar plate of ideas and plans such as prohibiting pre-existing condition exclusions, individual mandates, and public sponsored individual health insurance plans.

President Obama had some others in mind for his first choice in this post. But Sebelius will be a powerful person in dealing with the health reform issue.

Many Americans are wondering what the next steps will be on the health care front. With our national government trying to make some sense out of how to approach a federal plan, that still leaves a lot of people who are concerned about such a plan reducing our choices in care and if it will affect the competitive nature of the open market in health care. But we don’t seem to have a lot of options to consider. You may think there’s no need for nationalizatin but you must realize that either way you are paying for everyone to have healthcare.

Nearly 48 million Americans were uninsured for the entire year of 2005. Of this some people will try and pay what they can toward their own medical bills and the other 43 million in medical care for these people will be paid in the following proportions. About one third of these expenses will be paid by government programs and the remaining two thirds of these bills will be paid through higher premiums for people with health insurance.

Looking at this a person would think that their medical outflow would be less than if there were a federal plan to pay for. The reality may be different than this thought process, what if a person enters the emergency room, they have a ruptured blood vessel their brain and this is causing internal bleeding. The medical staff there will do everything they can do to keep her alive, but in the end she dies anyhow. The family answers questions from the hospital who are trying to determine the story, they discover Mary had high blood pressure but had to choose between her meds and food for her family. If she had had the medication she more than likely wouldn’t have been in this situation. The cost of trying to treat and ultimately trying to save her life in those few hours is very expensive compare to what a annual cost of the medication would’ve been.

This is a story where no one profits. Everyone will be paying for this scenario Mary went through in the emergency room. There were many hours spent by the medical staff even when the picture looked grim. An in the end, Mary’s children are left with no mother.

This scenario would make it appear that the best choice would’ve been to have some plan in place to give Mary access to her medication.