(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

By Lara   

Timed to coincide with Barack Obama’s inauguration, this week’s Panorama investigated some the challenges President Obama will face – in particular, as he attempts a radical overhaul of the US healthcare system.

There is a shocking lack of medical care for America’s poorest citizens and every year, 23,000 people die because they cannot afford basic healthcare insurance. Hundreds of people queue up overnight to see a charity – Remote Area Medical in makeshift clinics, set up a few times a year to offer free health checks to America’s poor – a charity that was originally founded to help third world countries, but now spends over half its time within the US.

It is completely baffling that such a powerful nation is able to provide free education to all its citizens and yet cannot provide basic health provision for citizens who are clearly falling below the poverty line. Take Debbie, a former cancer patient featured on the programme. She lived in a tent in the woods to fund her chemotherapy because she was not considered poor enough to qualify for state assistance. Another case study, Jessica Moberly, a mother of five from Kentucky, was told that her state can not provide her with a liver transplant – she is given 6 weeks to live.

We read about the shortfalls of the NHS every day – MRSA, waiting lists and the postcode lottery, but this thought-provoking programme made you take a step back and look again at what we have. The NHS is certainly far from perfect and there will always be exceptions to the rule, but in large, we know that should anything happen to us there are teams of doctors and nurses only a phonecall away. As we continue through these times of economic crisis, at least we won’t have the additional burden of hearing that our premiums will be going up next year.