Jump to content
THE BROWNS BOARD

Obama's stance on health care.


Guest mz.

Recommended Posts

Well, I thought so. But his position seems extremely, well, who the f knows right now.

 

Obama, the healthcare Riddler

 

Why is the president suddenly so afraid of a single-payer solution to America's healthcare crisis?

 

By David Sirota

 

May 16, 2009 | The most stunning and least reported news about President Barack Obama's press conference with health industry executives this week wasn't those executives' willingness to negotiate with a Democrat. It was that Democrat's eagerness to involve those executives in a discussion about healthcare reform even as they revealed their previous plans to pilfer $2 trillion from Americans.

 

That was the little-noticed message from the made-for-TV spectacle that administration officials called a healthcare "game changer": In saying they can voluntarily slash $200 billion a year off the country's medical bills over the next decade and still preserve their profits, healthcare companies implicitly acknowledged they were plotting to fleece consumers and have been fleecing them for years. With that acknowledgment came the tacit admission that the industry's business is based not on respectable returns, but on grotesque profiteering and waste -- the kind that can give up $2 trillion and still guarantee huge margins.

 

Chief among the profiteers at the White House event were insurance companies, which have raised premiums by 119 percent since 1999, and one obvious question is why -- why would Obama engage those particular thieves?

 

It's a difficult query to answer, because Obama is a healthcare mystery, struggling to muster consistent positions on the issue.

 

Listening to a 2003 Obama speech, it's hard to believe he has become such an enigma. Back then, he declared himself "a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program" -- that is, one eliminating private insurers and their overhead costs by having government finance healthcare. Obama’s position was as controversial then as it is today -- which is to say, controversial among political elites, but not among the general public. ABC's 2003 poll showed almost two-thirds of Americans desiring a single-payer system "run by the government and financed by taxpayers," just as CBS's 2009 poll shows roughly the same percentage today.

 

In that speech six years ago, Obama said the only reason single-payer proponents should tolerate delay is "because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."

 

That might explain why, when Illinois contemplated a 2004 healthcare proposal raising insurance lobbyists' "fears that it would result in a single-payer system," those lobbyists "found a sympathetic ear in Obama, who amended (read: gutted) the bill more to their liking," according to the Boston Globe. Maybe Obama didn't think single-payer healthcare was achievable without a Democratic Washington. And when in a 2006 interview he told me he was "not convinced that [single-payer healthcare] is the best way to achieve universal healthcare," perhaps he was following the same rationale, considering his insistence that he must "take into account what is possible."

 

Of course, even as a senator aiming for the "possible" in a Republican Congress, Obama promised to never "shy away from a debate about single payer." And after the 2008 election fulfilled his precondition of Democratic dominance, it was only logical to expect him to initiate that debate.

 

That's why the White House's current posture is so puzzling. As the Associated Press reports, Obama aides are trying to squelch any single-payer discussion, deploying their healthcare point-person, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., to announce that "everything is on the table with the single exception of single-payer."

 

So it's back to why -- why Obama's insurance-industry-coddling inconsistency? Is it a pol's payback for campaign cash? Is it an overly cautious lawmaker's paralysis? Is it a conciliator's desire to appease powerful interests? Or is it something else?

 

For a president who spends so much time on camera answering questions, those have become the biggest unanswered questions of all.

 

via here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's very strange. Anybody would like oustanding health care to be free for everybody who

doesn't have health care, or very limited health care.

 

It is SAD that anyone doesn't have it.

 

But it can't be funded, and I think Obama is stepping back from something

 

that cannot be done. There isn't enough money.

 

I found a good article about this on the Rasmussen site:

 

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_con...rupt_the_nation

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Though Lawrence Kudlow is a Conservative tax-cuts guy, and it doesn't surprise anyone that he would have something to say on this matter, he does fairly and justly bring up the cost issue. For now, I'm going to think Obama and Co. are still working on it and certainly haven't yet decided it cannot be done.

 

That being said, I'd certainly be a tad disappointed if this still wasn't one of this administration's priorities.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would love to see everyone have the benefit of having quality health care.

 

But this has to be studied and donr right, it cannot be ramrodded through like the Stimulus bill.

 

I would like to see it done as a national insurance cooperative or something that would not involve a socialized approach.

 

Obama and the dems have already screwed up the banking and auto industry, we dont need another fascist knee jerk move.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh T, you had me up until

 

Obama and the dems have already screwed up the banking and auto industry, we dont need another fascist knee jerk move.

 

Maaaaaaaaaaan, so close.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just one reason I dislike democrats.

I think a well designed health care program would be a good thing.

 

But:

 

I say the Dems take a bad approach by removing responsibility from the consumer.

Also I think they either know it ain't really going to happen and demagogue it anyway OR they're stupid enough to think they can just make "the rich man" pay for a service every American should pay something for.

 

WSS

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...