With the approaching 2012 presidential election, students are reflecting on President Barack Obama’s leadership over the last three years. The issue of health care arises as a popular topic since it goes hand-in-hand with the national budget.

“I believe that it is taking too much of our federal budget, and it will just continue to worsen our debt crisis,” senior Salmaan Javed said. “But aside from that, at least it is providing services for a lot of the underprivileged people.”

According to CBS News, Obama’s health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law in March 2010, expanded coverage to over 30 million Americans who were uninsured, but it will cost the U.S. a sum of $950 billion over 10 years.

“There needs to be some improvements with more of the national budget in mind, but overall it’s an OK plan,” said Javed, who watches CNN often and occasionally reads The Economist magazine
Junior Shahab Moghadam agrees with Javed in regard to the financial tolls, but in addition, he wants drastic change in Obama’s health care plan.

“I feel that the American health care system is inefficient and fraught with waste,” Moghadam said. “But I disagree with President Obama's Health Care Reform plan since it constitutes an unprecedented government intervention in the free market, a situation which should never be allowed to occur.”

Moghadam has been greatly influenced by Ronald Reagan’s autobiography “An American Life,” which lays out the case for limited government and fiscal responsibility. Moghadam believes that the free market should be allowed to function unabated, and this should also apply to U.S. health care.
“In a way, these two issues are intimately intertwined,” Moghadam said. “Unless we Americans display true democratic and free market economic values at home, we will not be able to spread them to the rest of the world.”