Obama’s Health Care Speech: Press Reaction

Last night, President Obama laid out his vision for health care reform before a special joint session of Congress. The pillars of his plan are: i) Curbing the worst abuses of private insurance, ii) Requiring everyone to have insurance, iii) Insurance exchanges, which are basically government websites where customers can order insurance off a “menu” of plans, the idea being that if tens of millions of people order the #2 Combo, everyone’s lunch will be cheaper.

The president made it clear that the country can’t afford to wait for reform. Last night, he took on the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives who claim that they oppose reform because it would increase the deficit. “Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close,” Obama said. The president reminded the audience that each of us pays a “hidden tax” of $1000 dollars a year to subsidize charity and emergency care for the uninsured.

It was an impressive performance, but as John Nichols of the Nation observes, it was hardly a rousing, “to-the-barricades” oration:

Obama still talked about “options” and “choices.” But he suggested that they would be offered mainly by insurance companies that would be enjoy “incentives”—i.e., new streams of taxpayer dollars—if they agree to abide by consumer-friendly regulations and come up with strategies for covering more of the uninsured.

The president expressed support for a very limited public option, a kind of welfare program that only about 5% of Americans would choose to join. This is not the public option his liberal supporters had in mind. It’s non-threatening to the insurance companies, though. Private insurers love the idea of the government low-grading the insurance pool and taking on the sickest people who can’t get coverage anywhere else. That means private insurers can make even more money off the remaining healthy, paying customers.

James Ridgeway of Mother Jones is even less optimistic, “As for the public option, that’s pretty clearly gone down the drain.”

One GOP legislator decided that a joint session of Congress was basically a town hall with the president. Rep. Joe Wilson (SC) screamed “You lie!” when the president explained, for the umpteenth time that undocumented immigrants will not be covered. As with the town halls, Wilson’s performance had a whiff astroturf about it. Sure enough, Sue Sturgis of Raw Story found that Wilson pocketed over $2 million in campaign contributions from the health care industry.

The president also reminded America that health care reform will not pay for abortions. (For more on myth-making around women’s health, see Laurie Rubiner’s excellent post at RH Reality.)

Instead of presenting a vision and asking Congress to line up behind him, the president stressed that he was synthesizing a compromise position incorporating ideas from the left and the right. Instead of a coherent vision, the president’s scheme sounds more like a last-ditch compromise plan to enable him to declare victory. Like many Democrats, the president seems to be confusing the strategic with the expedient. If “reform” means saddling ordinary Americans with expensive mandatory insurance without a meaningful public option to keep costs in check he could doom the electoral fortunes of the Democrats for years to come.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care and is free to reprint. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.

istockphoto
Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Jerry P.

10:16PM PDT on Sep 14, 2009

In response to Jody C: Medicare's overhead costs are about 3%,
private insurance is 21%. The latter, in part, because insurance executive get paid large salaries.

send a green star

Elizabeth M.

3:05PM PDT on Sep 14, 2009

I agree with Aod, in theory. Let us start doing a better job of managing our money. 1) stop spending money on a war that a) is not ours and b) nobody wants, 2) stop bailing out companies that are looking for a handout because they got too greedy when times were good and now they are feeling the pinch of a tough economy 3) stop spending funds on programs like cash for clunkers that sound good in theory but in the end will result in the trashing of thousands of servicable vehicles and the filling of dozens of landfills, so that we can once again support an industry that is only suffering because they got greedy when times were good.

Having said that, I do support Obama. I don't think he has always made the right choices, but I believe that his intentions are good and he is DOING something, which is much more than we could say for Bush. I wish that people would stop with the propaganda and hate so that he can focus on his job as President.

As an addendum, I will just say that I think it is sad that our young people have been prevented from hearing our president speak. It seems unconscionable to me that we are not worried that our children are exposed to 'R' ratings on a regular basis but that some people feel that we need to protect them from a speech by the leader of our nation. It is a very sad commentary on the values we hold dear. When did we stop respecting the presidency?

www.marchbooks.com

Jody C.

5:27AM PDT on Sep 14, 2009

The problem with a public option is that 1). The bureaucracy that will be developed will cost the American people so much more than the insurance coverage 2) The government option will be so much more alluring than the private sector, which it has to be if it will be affordable to those who don't have insurance, therefore everyone will be on it, thus the private sector will be gone and all the jobs that go with that industry. If people had jobs the majority would have insurance. It seems that this is going to hurt our economy in more than one way. Everyone talks about Medicare, and Social Security- this is paid for by you and your employer. Can you not see how much more a tax burden this additional insurance from the government is going to cost you personally. How will you afford that and can't afford insurance from the private sector? One more thing there is already a public option to healthcare -Medicaid. This is for the poor. I realize this is administrated at the State level, but let the federal government have that nightmare if it wants it.

Chris F.

5:00PM PDT on Sep 13, 2009

I just want the same choices and coverage that our taxes pay for for our Congress and Our President. Why is that to much to ask for.

Diya A.

7:08PM PDT on Sep 12, 2009

Sometime I don't understand why American is preferred to pay private Ins a lots of money each month but now they complained bout the insurance reform that the president offered. Gees maybe they should think clearly that they just making the private insurance richer!!!

Bill E.

4:06AM PDT on Sep 12, 2009

As someone who has been admirably cared for under the British NHS for over fifty years, I find it totally unbelievable that so many US citizens have a strange attitude to the term" socialism". Many of you must have a wild west mentality? What is more,- as a country that prides itself on its Christian values, how can it be that you have so many Fascist Christians? This is a frightening oxymoron!

Jean A.

2:53PM PDT on Sep 11, 2009

I just received a survey from christian seniors Assoc. It was misleading, full of hate, propaganda. What is going on with so called christians or evangelicals? I wasn't taught the way they are acting. Simply a no for health care. Obama is a socialist, and all sorts of hateful remarks. Enough already/

Dragonfly C.

11:55AM PDT on Sep 11, 2009

It was cracking me up yesterday (or scaring me) how people seemed to get different things from the speech. The media was trying to spin it as him backing away from the public option. In what parallel universe? That's not what I saw at all. The media was trying to take the public option away from us hours after he said that he will not back down. Sheesh.

Aod D.

11:20AM PDT on Sep 11, 2009

Why not take all the tax money being sent over seas to places like Africa and Russia and keep it HERE and use THAT for health care. Cut the salaries of the 438 members of congress and the president and use that money for health care. They are supposed to work for the PEOPLE not make more than the average American off the people. So start there--don't tax us more--force others to take less. We shouldn't be sending our hard earned dollars to any other country, and we should have a say in how much our elected employees are making.

9:19AM PDT on Sep 11, 2009

I agree with Lionel's sentiment. Asking politicians, who are having their campaigns funded by the health care industry (as in Wilson's case), is like asking the oil industry to fund the development of solar power. It's not gonna happen. I think, first and foremost, we need to separate our fear of change from the real issues of this debate.

I think that Obama said it best when he said 'We did not come to fear the future, but to shape it.' I think that says it all. The status quo is not working. That much is evident. Change is necessary, that does not mean that it will be easy or that we will feel comfortable doing it. There is a better solution, other countries have found it. When will America take the helm again? We need to show our strength and lead the way to a better future.