Health care, is it a fundamental right or a privilege? A revolutionary new bill that aims to extend health care to over 31 million Americans is under debate and will possibly soon become law.

The bill ensures that insurance companies cannot deny coverage based on pre existing conditions and also helps subsidize coverage for the huge number of people who cannot afford it. Whether one agrees with the bill or not it will affect every single American, including every student on this campus.

Students on campus now have the option of staying under their parents insurance plan for longer and will make it cheaper for students to actually afford health care once they enter the working world.

The bill however will also affect students by virtue of the extra cost it will incur on the American taxpayer. The bill is estimated to cost over $1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years, yet law makers claim that it will reduce the budget deficit by $138 billion over that period as well.

If this is true then this bill may even cause students to pay less for health care over the course of their lives.

Being college students most of us can not often appreciate what it is like to come from a low income background where health care is not a realistic option, if this bill succeeds in doing what it is aiming to do then we as students may live in a better world as we get older.

For the pre-medical students on this campus, this bill is especially interesting as it puts a greater focus and appreciation on primary care doctors who in recent years have been pushed to the fringes by insurance companies.

This negligence of primary care doctors under the current system resulted in fewer and fewer medical students choosing this path after medical school. This bill may spur more students to once again pick this path.

This bill will change all of our lives, it will make our campus community healthier insuring that those students from less privileged backgrounds will have access to care. Yet only time will tell if this bill will also empty our wallets just a little bit more as we leave the protection of our parents and enter the real world.