The President gives a great speech. He offers reason against hysteria. He summons us to our better angels. He challenges politicians and Americans to do "great things," because that is "who we are." He claims the center by defining himself against left and right, even as he acknowledges merit in both.
But he faces an embittered and disloyal Republican opposition. They scorn his speech as he gives it. They are intent on breaking the administration, not addressing a national crisis. The president offered preemptive concessions on tort reform, while inviting Republicans to join an adult conversation, putting aside the lies and calumnies that have so distorted the debate, like "death panels" and "government takeover of health care." He was answered immediately by anonymous Republican jeering from the floor, and formally by Rep. Charles Boustany, a medical doctor before coming to Congress, delivering the official Republican response by contrasting Republican "common sense" proposals with Obama's "government takeover of health care." Once more the president offers his hand; once more it is spit upon.
The president paid tribute to progressive pressure by sustaining his oft stated position on the public option -- that it offered Americans an important choice and held insurance companies accountable, and that he was open to other ways to achieve that end. But his concessions went to the conservatives in the Democratic Party. Senator Max Baucus, who has done more to weaken and impede reform than any other Democrat, was probably the big winner in the speech. Gone were the top end tax increases that House progressives would use to help pay for health care. Instead the President bowed towards the Baucus notion of taxing insurance companies for Cadillac health care plans -- which will raise questions among working and middle class people as to whether they will bear the burden. He embraced Bush's proposal to test out tort reform programs in different states, even though he knows that states like Texas that have imposed strict tort reforms show no evidence of cost savings. He stood for a very circumscribed public insurance choice, but said he was still open to ersatz ideas like the Baucus coop fantasy. He will hope that his speech has calmed fears of seniors and recaptured independents with health care who will benefit from insurance reform. No mention was made of empowering Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.
What now? The president is right it is time for action. Any reform must overcome entrenched Republican opposition. The president must turn to the negotiations that matter -- those among the members of his own party, seeking to put together a plan that (1) works and that (2) can gain the votes necessary to pass. Democrats cannot afford to fail. But the plan, which will be done over entrenched Republican obstruction, must work. If there are mandates on individuals, there must be subsidies to make insurance affordable. With people mandated to get reform, there must be competition offered by a non-profit public insurance to help keep a lid on costs, and to keep insurance companies honest. The costs should be born by progressive taxes and elimination of expensive subsidies to insurance companies and drug companies. Republicans have shown again and again that they are willing to say anything, repeat any lie to make him fail. The only question is whether Democrats can unify in the hope of passing historic reform that works, and in the fear of failing to deliver once more.
This president deserves a better opposition both on the right -- one willing to enter an adult conversation about how to solve the staggering challenges this country faces -- and on the left, one willing to push him hard for fundamental reform, and pressure those in both parties standing in the way.
He is ill-served by the petty corruption and ideological venom of the right, and the docility of the left.
If we are going to be able to overcome the entrenched corporate interests and lobbies that dole out money to conservatives in both parties, we will need a much more independent and aggressive progressive mobilization.
We've had Public Option for almost 30 years.
I've expounded on this in many of Huffo's threads but let me simply say... America you deserve better, do not believe the Conservative lies.
NB: It took two goes in my country to get universal Medicare established. The Conservatives got rid of it when they got voted back in. The Labor Party re-established it at the next election after that. And although they have undermined it every time they got back into power the Conservatives don't dare try to get rid of it again. What I am getting at here is you have to push HARD for it- it's NOT going to happen through bi-partisanship.
PS: I just found out my wife is pregnant over a fortnight ago :) , two days after we went and had the first ultrasound, yesterday we had the second, all at no cost. We have complete confidence in our system.
:)
As for content, name one thing new he proposed from a legislative perspective - zero. His medical malpractice ruse is what we call a "white lie" - an administrative act, not a legislative restriction.
Funding - no problem. All that waste, fraud and abuse that he can't stop today, will stop tomorrow (after he EXPANDS the program) because......well because he says so. Silly.
PWR
.05 of 300,000,000 =1,500,000.00 I think. Divide that by 50 states and I come up with 300,000 per state. Somebody check my math.
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/09/05/the-chicken-and-egg-problem-can-the-public-option-succeed-where-prudential-failed/
Medicare has never had to compete with the insurance industry for “customers.”
Medicare’s administrators had a good idea of how much leverage they had on day one over the nation’s providers. This allowed them (eventually) to make an offer to America’s providers that the providers could not refuse – accept Medicare’s below-average rates or lose a lot of money.
If the “option” isn’t going to have a ready-made supply of providers to work with, how will it be able to determine what premiums it will charge.
The problem is that the “option’s” managers won’t be able to negotiate advantageous rates with providers unless they can give providers some idea of how many patients they will deliver to them, but they can’t make that estimate until they have some idea of what premiums the “option” will charge, but they can’t do that till they know what they have to pay providers, etc.
by Kip Sullivan
or more then half the population of canada which does just fine on their single desk system
any single desk system that has the authority to negotiate costs is a win...
its long past time to take the profit out of health care!
I am going to use 4 percent instead of 5 percent because that is CBO’s projection. 12 million enrollees out of 300 million. (closer to 1/3 of Canada) 288 million not enrolled.
If you mix health care into a pie, lets say, made up of doctors, nurses , hospitals, drugs etc.
Slice it into 25 pieces. 1 piece is 4 percent of the pie. 1 pie is worth 1 dollar.
Each piece is worth 4 cents.
The public option piece says I am only going to pay 3 cents for my piece to the cook.
The cook knows if he lets the public option piece save a penny than the other 24 pieces will want to save a penny, Now says the cook my pie is only worth 75 cents. I’m not going to do that. Let that public option piece go whistle. I’m not going to lower my prices. It wouldn’t be good business.
Plus- Insurance companies have more costs, admin etc. but option people will mostly be poor which means subsidys to them. That will be added to the cost of the public option.
Would appreciate your thoughts
Get involved!
As he usually does, Pres. Obama made a fine speech. He is an intelligent, articulate man and a skilled orator. It is a positive pleasure to have a decent, reasonable man in the Oval Office instead of a malignant thug.
I am fond of reason Used to be a chemist; we like logic. But we must face the fact that today's Republicans are a gang of stormtroopers.. Even Barry Goldwater said of Nixon's men "They don't think like conservatives.They think like thugs" In other words, they had no respect for the law, for justice, or for the truth. All they cared about was power. And today's Republicans are worse by far than Nixon's mob. They think that they are on God's side, and any atrocity they commit is a righteous act. THis kind of thinking led to the Crusades, the Inquisition , the centuries of Catholic-Protestant religious wars, and "Islamic" terrorism.
Al Gore and John Kerry tried sweet reason against the stormtroopers. They lost. If Democrats want to win, we have to fight fire with fire. Call them on their lies, and even more so on their record!t When Reagan took office the Federal debt was one trillion. When Bush left it was 10.2 trillion dollars! The only time in the last 29 years the books balanced was the last two Clintoon years. And of course the missing 9,000,000,000,000 went into republican bank accounts! If we get the FACTS out we will win!
Their marching orders are clear: see that this administration fails, even at the expense of our country.
Though Obama has repeatedly tried, they remain unresponsive to ANYTHING. These are the facts. What part of that don't you understand?