Dear President Obama…
Posted by Steve Piontek, Editor-in-Chief in health care reform, opinion, politics, public figuresI know you are probably getting tons of advice from all corners about what you should do now in the aftermath of the upset election of Scott Brown, a Republican, as a senator in the bluest of states, Massachusetts.
You, and we, are hearing from the punditocracy that it was a repudiation of your overreaching agenda, of health care reform and of all those other “ultra-liberal” causes you’ve espoused since being sworn in exactly a year ago.
Democrats are indulging in paroxysms of hand wringing (the Chicken Little thing), while Republicans are ecstatic beyond belief (What me worry?). Meanwhile, the country is waiting to see what you’re going to do.
Here, sir, is my advice: Take off the gloves.
Let us see what you really believe in instead of leaving us to fathom what it is that we think you believe in. And when you’ve shown us what you believe in—then fight for it.
Enough with the bipartisanship already! If it isn’t obvious by now that you’re not going to get any support from across the aisle—for pretty much anything—then something is wrong with your receptor. We know you have the fire in the belly and know how to fight. You overcame long odds to become president after all.
But because you haven’t really fought for anything all out since taking office, and have mainly given half-hearted support to your initiatives, the opposition has been able to get away with its unending chorus of “No!”
Case in point: Health care reform. I’ll be damned if I know—and I cover it!—where you stand on the issue. And that’s the problem, sir. For someone so articulate, you have a way of fuzzying up, if not hiding altogether, what your goals are and what it is you really want to accomplish.
You and I know that “No” is not going to solve any of the problems that face this country. In the language of the schoolyard, you’ve got to make your opponents “put up or shut up.” And if they can’t or don’t “put up,” then start pounding them for doing nothing. Harry Truman did it. Bill Clinton did it. You can do it.
You were elected in large part to change things, if I might remind you of your mantra, sir.
It’s true you inherited the biggest mess of any president since FDR. But messes make the man, if you get my drift.
A couple of other things: I don’t think you’ve got a grip on the amount of rage that’s out there. People want jobs and security for their homes and families. They want to see a sense of fair treatment prevail. They want to know that the country’s not giving away the bank—to the banks!
If you don’t get on the right side of this rage, you’re going to be a one-term president.
So, take on the big banks, which are the focus of so much of the rage. But don’t propose measures as a bureaucrat. And, sir, calling a bevy of bank CEOs “fat cat bankers” one time is just not going to cut it. As in anything else, practice makes perfect. So, once more with feeling!
If the country is still limping along a year from now, with unemployment still sky high and people feeling you’re not doing much about it, there’ll be nobody to blame but yourself.
You can look at the Massachusetts election as a reason to run for cover or as a wake-up call. I sincerely hope you decide to do the latter. But remember one thing about wake-up calls, sir. They don’t do any good unless you get out of bed.
Tags: financial, health care reform, opinion, politics, public figures
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Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason unemployment is still going up is because Obama is killing the economy, including those “Fat Cat Bankers”. In fact a local bank in my state was just closed this week by federal regulators. All those people now no longer have jobs. Maybe he could do more to help businesses recover instead of making them the enemy.
Yes!
It won’t matter come this November with the upcoming congressional elections. Obama has done irreparable harm to his administration with his ultra-socialist policies which the American public has begun to rebell against. Enough is enough in the eyes of the American people. His actions have slated him to be a one term president.
Bryan,
So Obama is responsible for a local bank in your area closing? Hmmm…sounds like a stretch to me. Don’t you think the bank’s management (or lack of it) might have had a bit more to do with it than the president?
And James,
Please, if you would, tell me exactly what the “ultra-socialist policies” are that you mention? This charge is beginning to seem like a paint brush that’s looking for some paint.
Steve Piontek
Steve,
I am quite disappointed in your position. Don’t get me wrong, you have an absolute right to your beliefs. And an absolute right to express them. It is a part of the patchwork quilt that makes our country great. However, I must respectfully disagree with your assessment that the President has been timid in following his agenda. And I completely disagree that the mood of the country right now is one that clamors for him to push even harder and fight more. He has over-reached, and he and those who follow him are being reminded of that by the people of America. It is the built-in correcting mechanism that our Founders put in place to avoid tyrannical rule by a person of any particular political persuasion. If he follows your advice, our country will need years to recover. If he is as intelligent as his supporters like to claim he is, he will hear the voice of the American people, and become a President who respects the office and the country he serves.
It appears that everyone is forgetting that Obama ran on a “centrist” platform to entice those in the middle to vote for him. That is what got him elected in the first place, not his liberal base. This is the same group that leveled him in MA.
Yes, we all wanted change, but Obama led us to believe the process would be measured, bipartisan and transparent. It has not been and Obama has turned his agenda over to the covert thieves in Congress, who want nothing but retribution for the Bush years.
The “poster child” for what is wrong in America is Keith Olbermann, who continues to live in the past with his sign off of how many days it has been since Bush declared victory in Iraq. How many days has it been since Janet Napolitano delcared “the system worked”? We cannot let the past prevent us from moving foreward.
Obama needs to quit blaming the insurance business. There is plenty of blame to go around. Many in the system are making more obscene profits than the insurance industry. Yes, we all agree that the Health Care “system” needs to be reformed, but that includes the provider system as well as the payer system. Let’s all roll up our sleeves and get to work on building a better system in an open, transparent manner.
Here here.
Bush won a second term thanks to a couple thousand votes in Ohio, and turned around and announced that he had a mandate and by GOD was going to use it. It’s time for Obama, who blew away McCain, to realize that he had a mandate and by GOD he’s been squandering it.
Independents are half the voters in this country, and they have no ideological core. What they look for is leadership and effectiveness, and when Obama demonstrates that even with a huge mandate and super-majorities in both houses of Congress, that he can’t even get out of Iraq, close Gitmo, or pass health care reform within a year, he is showing the independents that he is weak and ineffective.
Steve gets it! Americans are mad because Obama has never really come out swinging for his programs; all the Republicans have doen is to stand against what Obama says he might be for and never come up with any substantive programs of their own. Fundamentally, America faces deep moral and ethical issues and our political system has failed (BOTH parties) to deal with them using political solutions.
To everyone here who takes issue with Steve and loses not one iota of sleep over working people who pay their taxes, contribute to the funding of Medicare/Medicaid, yet are vulnerable to losing their job and their insurance, or who cannot afford insurance, shame on you.
To those of you who watch people who have contributed to their society declined for health insurance and say, “C’est la vie,” shame on you. To those of you who watch good people lose their homes, their savings, their children’s college funds and think, “Now that’s capitalism I can LIVE with!” shame on you. There’s a place in hell for that kind of thinking — often, that belief is all that sustains me as I watch the way people in this industry and even outside it turn a blind eye to what’s going on with health care in this country.
Last time I checked, we were about #50 in life expectancy according to the Central Intelligence Agency Factbook, right above Albania. We spend at least 2x as much as most of the nations we hear all this disdain for — nations that beat us in healthcare delivery, lifespan, and infant mortality, just to name a few metrics.
If you can live with all of this and stick to your guns while waving your flags, shame on you.
Great article! I agree that it is time to take off the gloves. The Senate vote in Massachusetts should be the needed wake up call.
Kate,
Just one word for your comments: Bravo!
I am new to this blog. I read and participate in Sam’s Blog and noticed your blog from a mailing that I get from NU.
All I have to say is “Wow”. As a political opponent of the President (notice the word political) I hope that he takes your advice.
It seems to me that he campaigned as a slightly left of center, mainstream Democrat, who’s cool charm on the campaign trail gave the impression that he was also competent. I believe that he has governed much more left than was anticipated and he is suffering for it. There is also the issue of competence (cf the impression that he cannot operate without his teleprompter is really taking hold). I think that he already has taken off the gloves and the American people do not like what they see. He has campaigned hard in NJ and VA and lost big. His health care plan was a centerpiece of the MA election and he lost big.
By all means, Mr. President, please follow Steve’s advice.
Finally, a “bravo” to Kate? Setting up strawman arguments and condemning people to Hell for disagreeing with her politically? Not a good job on the persuasiveness front. If a Republican sounded like her we would have much hand-wringing about hate speech.
Anyway, hate to be a bummer in my first post, but there you have it.
Thanks.
Right on!! Thanks for your open, honest opinion.
Dear James,
Since this is your first visit to my blog, let me say ‘Welcome aboard.’ I hope you’ll come back often and I promise to keep doing my best to keep you ‘wowed’ !
1) Let’s remember that the president is only the one head of the hydra that leads our economy. We’ve been down this road before and we’ve watched Japan slowing make it’s way out. It may be painful, but it’s possible.
2) In the “put up or shut up” vein, I would like to see the plans Obama and our various legislators have for health reform, et al. Like you, Steve, this is what I study. I’ve seen very few sources in the government or media attempt to explain these plans in terms most people can understand. The Kaiser Family Foundation just published a poll that showed people’s approval of the health care bill increased (mostly) when the individual provisions were explained to them. As you say, he should fight and fight openly so that the real debates between citizens, not interest groups, can begin.
Kate, socialism doesn’t work. When anybody tries to legislate away misery, it usually compounds the problem. I’m with James, let’s see Obama really tell us how he feels. If he does that, not only will he be a one term President, although I believe he has already sealed that deal, but the GOP will take both Houses in the fall.
Well, Walter, here’s what I know: we compare horribly in any number of metrics to countries like France, Germany, Sweden, even the UK. Included in those metrics is cost.
You call it “socialism” to guarantee health care coverage to all Americans — even those who’ve killed themselves to work, pay taxes, and provide for their families and are threatened with losing it all if they or one of their family members gets catastrophically sick and they have inadequate or no health insurance because they can’t afford it.
I suppose many who think this situation is just fine would submit that we have “the greatest healthcare in the world” and cite the fact that people come here from other countries to get treated. Well, if they’re talking about foreign dignitaries and royalty, okay, they may come here. But I bet not too many middle class folks from abroad jet over here and get treated by the royalty of the medical profession — many or most of whom you and I would never even be able to get an appointment with.
Lost in many of the discussions about all those who come here from elsewhere is all the US folks heading down to places like Mexico to get healthcare they can’t afford here. Where are the numbers on that? I do know that insurers are looking with great interest in the number of Americans heading to places like India to get treatment they can’t afford here — wouldn’t you like to see those numbers?
Folks call it “socialism,” as if labeling universal health coverage for all Americans with an “-ism” relegates it automatically to some trash heap of silly old ideas cooked up by a bunch of red diaper babies with too much time on their hands.
I call it “progress.”
Kate – Thank you for being so honest about your desire to become something our Founders tried to keep us free from… My question to you is who do you think is paying for your utopia? If you think it is apropriate to use politicians to take one’s property for yourself and the “forgotten man”, do you then have personal property rights, so long as you do not acquire too much property either? We either have the first right to our labor production or we do not. Letting someone determine where that line is means there is no defined line at all. You think you are a champion of the “forgotten man” by convincing politicians to take the productivity of the overly productive, but you miss who the “forgotten man” is. That person is the average worker who finds it harder to remain independent of the control of Govt because of the rules you help put in place. The rich are never as affected by “take the from the rich” programs as are those who find it harder to acquire wealth as a result.
And what is it with a publication that focuses on independent insurance agents for your viewers championing the dismantling of the private insurance industry?
I JUST signed up for the NU e-newsletter, and I rarely, if ever, follow anyone’s ‘blog’, much less contribute. But by a bit of serendipity, this morning I receive Steve’s letter, and the comments are few in number & not too verbose. I thank you all, and compliment you on your wit, because, as the cliche goes, “brevity is the soul of wit” Now, before I reveal my lack of wit and go too long, let me try to comment…
Obama’s background is in being a community organizer, (with very little actual executive experience!), campaigned on a platform of openness, & the need for healthcare reform. IF he had been leader enough to ‘take the wheel’ of healthcare reform, kept it open and above board, (read here: let C-Span broadcast proceedings) and really included republicans, we may actually have meaningful healthcare reform being debated and voted on. HOWEVER, he did not do that. He passed the reins to Pelosi & Reid, who, with their respective majorities, chose to shut out those across the aisle, chose to work in secret and create a “Frankenstein monster” of huge proportion, passing out favors, and carving out exceptions, and completely disregarding serious constitutional limitations on federal power. They compounded their folly, in the arrogance of leadership, by outright “buying” the votes of some of their more reticent, or moderate colleagues, (M. Landrieu’s ‘Louisiana Purchase’ and B. Nelson’s Cornhusker Kickback’) in order to meet their self-imposed deadline of Christmas Eve.
So, without casting aspersions on the quality of Obama’s character, or the possible nefariousness of his greater goals or those of his advisors, I conclude the machinations of the Democratic Congress of the past 6-8 months has been nothing short of ludicrous, embarrassing, and downright shameful; making the “Miracle of Massachusetts” not only understandable, but wholly gratifyiing. Especially if it lays that putrid piece of legislation in its well-deserved grave.
Maybe now, with a clarion call to wake up and stop trying to pull the wool over the people’s eyes, the Dems will actually work with Repubs to implements some very positive, “market-freeing” reform. These would include removing the restrictions to buying health insurance across state lines, making personal costs for health insurance a tax deduction equal to that of businesses, meaningful tort reform, so dr.s don’t live in fear of malpractice litigation, and removing most, even all, state mandated covered services so people are free, and even forced, to pay attention to how their health care dollar is spent. Then you will see a proliferation of cost effective options spring up overnight and the ‘rolls of uninsured’ reduced in a meaningful way.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Shawn,
You need to get a grip. The publication is not “championing the dismantling of the private insurance industry.” And neither were the reform plans. If they were you’d still be hearing the screaming from private insurers.
Steve
Shawn, if you only knew just how far from reality any conception of me and others who believe in universal health coverage wanting to “dismantle the private insurance industry” is, you’d be quite shocked.
Apparently it’s hard for you and many others to imagine that one can enthusiastically support the continued thriving of the insurance industry and at the same time believe that a nation that permits the people who are the backbone of the country to live with the constant fear of losing everything to one catastrophic illness is failing its people. Odd, because it’s been my understanding that differences of opinion are supported and protected by the very heart and soul of our nation, the Constitution, and this industry is not excluded.
Upon joining the industry three decades ago, no one ever told me I was to support every single thing it does or support continuation of every single one of its operations. In this I am not alone; this I know for a fact.
So I put this to you: if you can watch happen to your friends or relatives what’s happened to scores of Americans who’ve knocked themselves out to serve the free market system only to lose everything to devastating illness due to inadequate or unaffordable insurance, and you can defend it to those persons as passionately as you are apparently willing to defend it from your comments here, well, Shawn, best I can say is that I am in awe.
Shawn,
Universal health care would look something like Medicare for all. How does Medicare work? Everyone 65+ is in; taxes & premiums are paid; insurers process claims by hospitals and physicians. Universal health care wouldn’t hurt health insurers – it would increase the amount of their business, which is administering health plans including Medicare.
Kate, I, for one, do not ‘knock [my]self out’ to serve the free market system. I participate, freely, and eagerly in it because it is the best economic system in the world, bar none. Going back to WWII, government instituted wage freezes on businesses. In order to compete for workers, they began offering health insurance to attract quality talent. When, soon after the war, consideration of taxing this “free” benefit was brought up, workers revolted and politicians listened to the voters, but employers were given the tax deductibility of the expense. More recently, governments, mainly states, have driven premiums thru the roof by so many requirements on insurance companies, to cover “x, y or z”. The market has been further ‘ham-strung’ by prohibiting purchase across state lines, creating 50 “mini-pools” of risk rather than one national one. These three government intrusions on the free market have contributed much to the perceived mess today. If private citizens were allowed to fully deduct their health ins. premiums, buy them across state lines, and Insurance companies allowed to cover or not cover services as they chose, the market would eagerly respond with lower premiums, coverage to suit any need or budget, and we’d all be a lot happier with less government telling us what to do.
Kate – you’re emotionalizing the concept of what you think is happening to everyone who is not you and then you think a bigger Govt controlling individual chooses is the answer. That is the debate we should all be having because you will find your feelings about Govt making things better is not reality of what Govt delivers. You instead decide I have no compassion for someone’s misfortune because I do not wish to allow myself or my fellow citizen’s to be controlled by an ever increasing Govt authority.
However, I recognize the failures of all of the Govt programs the Progressives have created these last 100 plus years. I would like control back for my choices and my dollars to make those choices freely. This does not mean we do not provide the safety net for those unable. I do not want to allow for the unwilling to receive while I must work for both of us. And creating a monsterous system to try to insure everyone is creating for the unwilling.
John – Medicare and Medicaid are broke. They are the exact proof of where giving more Govt control of our health decisions will lead on a grand scale. Medicare was the intentional incrementalism by Progressives over 40yrs ago to get us here because they failed several times to nationalize at once. The Medicare and Medicaid programs were signed into law on July 30, 1965 and since then have needed revenue adjustments several times. We are there again. It is not helping to keep costs competitive despite controlling doctor payments. It is creating the inflation in health cost we have experienced since its passage.
Now we are debating it as, “Well we already have Govt care, do you want us to take that away? Then allow yourself to take more Govt reform. It will stop the cost spiral” Folks it will lead to service rationing because they are setting cost controls and process regulations. Economic natural laws do not change for each product or service you try to control. The outcome is the same.
This leads to the inevitable dependency on Govt. It doesn’t matter that the system is failing you. Do you want to go cold turkey…NO? Great then sit down and accept more Govt reform.
It doesn’t matter to me how much you want it. I should not be dragged into your dream with my property or personal liberty.
However, since we seem no longer to be living under the respect of a Constitution that limits the power of Govt, I battle endlessly with people who bleed their emotion over why I am cruel because I do not want to accept their idea of Social Justice.
True Social Justice is allowing every single person their individual freedom to succeed or fail by the merits of their accomplishments. Not everyone succeeds. Not everyone tries. This has nothing to do with those unable. WE all have compassion for and charity toward the misfortunes anyone may experience in life. We do not have the patience for those “unwilling” to be standing in front of those unable.
Your ideas have failed to make life better everywhere it is tried and meanwhile it sacrifices individual liberty in the process. The dependency it creates has people willing to accept the decreased liberty for the security of something over the fear of having nothing. Over time people forget how to control their own destiny and despite how miserable they are in these other Countries they fear stepping back out to freedom. I am still free and will not accept more Govt as a promise over my own ability, even if I may fail in the process.
Whether you realize it or not you are demanding I do it your way for the greater good, even if it means my individual good suffers. That Collectivism is the opposite of our Country’s Founding.
Thomas – much more efficiently said than mine.
Well, here’s my bottom line: all I ask is that you be able and willing to defend your position to people who are losing their coverage or unable to obtain adequate coverage and then need it for something terrible. You can open any newspaper today and read the stories of people to whom this happens over and over again. Many of these are people still employed, mind you. Start with someone you know, care about, respect, or love — let’s say, someone who is depending on a local community fundraiser such as a bake sale or pancake supper, which are occurring across this country with alarming frequency — to help them with their medical bills — or someone flying to Mumbai or Guadalajara for care they can’t afford here.
I just don’t know how you do that and not get scalped when it’s clear that it is being done in many countries around the world (where, incidentally, they still have wealth, nice houses, great cars, all the accoutrements of high standards of living and universal health care has not taken that away).
I just don’t know how you do that period.
Your solution will not help. What will you tell them then?
Like others, this is the first time I have ever read a blog, much less attempted to contribute.
I applaud the “stand up and fight” that Steve (btw – read you in print religiously) initiated. I wish Obama would “stay at home and DO something,” I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the interview where he commented that he has not communicated with American public enough. I feel I have seen more interviews in past 12 months with Obama than I have in past 10 years combined. Even the “great communicator” wasn’t on TV this much (at least during his presidency)
As for the health care debate and socialism claims discussed above – I would like to remind everyone what we promote to our clients everyday – CONTROL!! Control over my health decisions, the ability to choose my physician and my overall financial decisions. We all know individuals who have relinquished this control and we rarely hear positive remarks.
got to go, Nancy is introducing Obama for State of Union. I look forward to returning to this blog to see dialogue…
Kate, I can easily find many friends and relatives over the past few years who could be case studies for your examples. But that does not justify up-ending the Constitution and expanding the federal government’s control over our lives in order to create one more mind-numbing bureaucratic extenstion over 15% of the economy at a prohibitively high cost and increase to the federal deficit, not to mention the philisophical and immoral cost of removing indivdual rights and responsibilities left to us as U.S. citizens. Besides, as I referred to in one of my earlier posts, there are many changes which may be easily made which will provide the freedom of the market to respond and serve a goodly percentage of those individuals and families. And, given the opportunity, the Market will rush ‘into the breach’ with solutions much more effectively than the government ever could or would!
Medicare does not control the lives of the seniors who get their health care through it. Seniors LOVE it. This idea that the federal gov’t is going to tell you who your doctor is, and that doctor won’t treat you until a gov’t bureaucrat signs off, is a straw man fiction. It doesn’t work that way in Medicare today.
What Medicare does is collect a small income tax to pay for hospitalization coverage (part A) and a means-tested premium to pay for physician services (part B). You can opt out of A&B for managed care (part C). You can pay a small premium and get prescription drug coverage that limits your out-of-pocket for drugs to about $3500/yr (part D). These programs are all administered by the health insurance industry, not the federal government.
Fed Gov’t is merely the funding mechanism for Medicare, and they do it by basically gathering all seniors into one giant group rather than forcing insurers to avoid high risks to protect affordability for their insureds. Insurers didn’t want to have these seniors, pre-Medicare, but insurers love making money administering Medicare for these seniors.
It is only for seniors because most Americans can be organized into groups by employer-based groups, and because the difference in expected cost of care varies so widely for seniors.
Groups are efficient because a population has a predictable health care expense, while individuals are expensive because of moral hazard anti-selection. Only those who expect large expenses will sign up.
National health care is just organizing all of us into one giant group.
Health care isn’t like flat-screen tv’s, where we ration them based upon ability to pay. It is illegal for hospitals to refuse to treat people based upon ability to pay. That’s what makes health care special. When we don’t have groups, needy people get care anyway, and the cost is passed along to those who are part of groups. Unless we are going to change the law to refuse health care based upon ability to pay, we need to face up to the fact that we (the covered) pay for it one way or another.
Simplest, lowest-cost way to do it is to organize all Americans into one giant group, and let insurers continue to administer it just like insurers do today for Medicare.
The other problem with expecting everyone to save and spend their own money for all their own health care is that if everyone saved $8000 per year, most people wouldn’t actually use the money – it would leave the consumption economy and sit in savings – which is not good for economic development. The really sick people would blow through their $8000 in no time, and become impoverished even though they ‘did the right thing’ by saving for their expenses like we expect them to save towards a flat-screen tv.
Shawn,
It doesn’t seem to me that Kate is the one who is ‘emotionalizing.’ Your overly passionate defense of your right to fail or succeed seems beside the point in the context of health care reform. As a civilized society it seems to me that we have a responsibility to just more than ourselves. Otherwise, what does the concept of ‘America’ mean? If it only means me, myself and I, then I think we’ve lost the game.
Steve
Steve, I guess I’m a little confused. Because we are a civilized society we relinquish our freedoms to a stronger centralized government who will administer a health care system that will, as Kate wants, protect us from any unfortunate circumstances that might come up. And, if I disagree, it means I’m thinking of only of myself. As Bill Buckley once said, “that’s socialist baby talk”.
As anybody considered restricting the trial lawyers, and letting the market place work? It’s done well in just about every other facet in our lives. And another thing, Kate brought up how the statistics on life expectancy, quality of care, etc. compared to countries who have adopted Socialized Medicine. I believe if you throw out the murders, the U.S. system beats them all. There system works great, just don’t get sick, like cancer or some other trivial ailment.
Walter,
Exactly what freedoms are you relinquishing in the straw man situation you set up with the spectre of a centralized government administering the health care system. Last I heard in both the House and Senate plans the health insurance business had a nice healthy role, with the promise of lots of new customers. If you want to automatically go to Apocalypse Now over this then I think you have to admit that’s what you’re doing. It’s you that is jumping to the conclusion that either one of these bills is going to lead to a government takeover. And because you say it’s so doesn’t make it so.
Steve
In a sense, I have no dog in this fight personally. I’m employed, have coverage, and, as an early retiree from another job, would have it again even if I lost the job I presently have.
I do have a family and friends, however, and I’m concerned that with one severe (or even one not-so-severe) illness or condition, any of them could find themselves uncovered and in deep financial distress for no fault of their own.
Shawn, you seem to feel that universal health coverage would provide no solution. That said, can you demonstrate that people in, say, France, or Germany, or Switzerland are losing their life savings to medical bills? And yet those countries spend far less than we on medical care per capita. And they’re not beating down our doors to trade what they have for what we have.
I strongly suspect that the images conjured up by those who think their ox is about to get gored here is that of scores of sick people sitting on dirty benches in dreary, noisy clinic hallways and having to rub elbows with the huddled masses. None of those who would depict universal health care this way want to get into the fact that there’s a fair amount of that in this country going on right now in emergency rooms.
I still want anyone who feels that there are high principles at stake here, including upholding the Constitution (huh?), to show me how they would persuade people who have worked hard for years and then lose insurance and get sick that we can’t succumb to “emotionalism” and “there’s a Constitution to be upheld” and dadgum it, we can’t “dismantle an entire industry” “just because you’re sick!” That’s a scene I’d like to see put up on YouTube. Maybe Harry and Louise could star in it, sitting once again at their kitchen table.
If the solution involved taking the health insurance industry totally out of the picture, that would gore my ox more than you know. And while I’m not sure it would be the worst thing in the world, I’m comfortable with the industry having a role. I’d like that role to be lobbyist-free, gotta admit. Preexisting conditions-free. For starters. I have a family I care about, and frankly, I’ve seen little or nothing (other than some Madison Avenue stuff) that suggests the health insurance industry currently has my family’s welfare anywhere on its radar screen except to collect premiums and pay as few claims as is humanly possible. I have some principles, too, and seeing to it that good people aren’t ruined to bolster the health insurance industry just isn’t one of them.
(You can read and re-read things ten times and not see a misspeak in it until after you’ve hit “Submit.”) So I’ll rephrase my last sentence directly above.
I have some principles, too, and turning a blind eye to people being ruined to bolster the health insurance industry just isn’t one of them.
Time to don my Mao cap and head home.
Steve:
There are a number of provisions in both the House and Senate bills that will effectively make the for-profit insurance world non-competitive. The explicit, stated goal of the President and Congressional leaders is to have a government run system. What makes any of these people, particularly the President who has never had a job in the private sector (excepting a very short stint with a law firm and some part-time law school thing), qualified to determine what is best for me?
What I do not get is why we have to destroy a system in which more than 80% are relatively satisfied in order to deal with the hard cases. It makes no sense other than as a government power grab. What is being proposed will destroy our current system.
Also, Kate, Steve, et al – please answer me this: If this is such a crisis and “people are going bankrupt and dying” then why do we wait four years before it is implemented? I will answer – to hide the real cost and because it is a government power grab.
James sums it up best. It is nothing more than a power grab by Washington bureaucrats. They are trying to persuade us (private citizens) to give up our liberty and responsibility in order to have someone else guarantee our peace and safety. If passed THERE WILL BE: 1. Longer waits to see Dr.s (read weeks, months & worse depending on service needed, 2. Rationed care (maybe you don’t like Sarah Palin’s term “death panels” but it will amount to the same thing), 3. Higher taxes for all (you may ‘know’ the oft repeated phrase how we all work until sometime in April or May to earn enough to cover our taxes, expect this to get stretched out a few more months).
There, you’ve admitted it in your own column, “….Case in point: Health care reform. I’ll be damned if I know—and I cover it!—…”. This is why I cancelled my subscription to this so-called trade publication.
Please, please, please, keep advising Obama with his super majority that his strategy should be to keep attacking the Republicans as the reason why he can’t get anything done. I’ll just sit back & smile in November ‘10 & ‘12.
Dear Konrad,
Good to know that even though you cancelled your subscription you’re still checking in.
I might remind you that there’s still a lot of time between now and November of 2010, not to mention 2012. So don’t count your smiles before you’re sure you’ve got something to smile about. Otherwise, it’s just weird.
Steve