THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 9, 2009
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The health care debate has revolved around the sacrosanct principle that nobody who has health insurance should have to worry about any change in the slightest. President Obama paid lip service to that idea again tonight. But, when he wasn't doing that, he was trying to make people understand that the health care system actually isn't that great. Indeed, it's awful, as almost any empirical examination of costs and outcomes will show.
The second main message of the speech was to reposition Obama in the center. Obama did this during the campaign, running ads literally showing alternatives on the left and the right with his in the center. He did it again tonight. Of course, what constitutes the "center" is a slippery concept. When you consider how far to the right Obama is compared with national health care plans, like in Great Britain, or single-payer plans, like in many European countries, then he is in the center. When you compare him to where the health care system stands right now, he's clearly proposing a dramatically more liberal change. Of course, the current health care system is a disaster, and it's simply impossible to fix the perverse market-related features of this system (adverse selection, severe information asymmetries, etc.) without government intervention.
Obama tried to seperate serious conservative objections from the paranoia and demagoguery that has prevailed so far by promising to address legitimate concerns. Will it succeed in getting Republicans to negotiate? Of course not. It's a good message, though.
Now that I've gotten you to read this post on Obama's speech, I should say that i don't think it matters all that much. I've written criticially of this notion that health care is a drama revolving around Obama. It's not. The Senate is the key entity here. No speech is going to have much effect -- it could make health care more popular, but centrist Senators were dragging their feet long before Obama's slide in public opinion. Fortunately, I also think that at the end of the day, even moderate Democrats will recognize their self-interest in passing something substantial.
Cross-posted on The Treatment and The Plank.
2 comments
Let's hear it for Rep. Joe Wilson. Keep it classy, Joe.
- csmiller
September 9, 2009 at 10:02pm
I can not support President's Plan as presented today. President continued to repeat his very recent ritual of publicly cutting the legs of the Public Option ostensibly to court GOP votes, appease his own Stray Dogs and Health Inc. He claimed PO was only one additional feature. There may be other ideas to replace it. He has no further evidence than before that the objectives above can be achieved by any other means, yet he did not want to sell it to the American public. May be I am missing something about a political stratagem President is after. President also failed to clearly connect the pathetic plight of many Americans to his solutions. Also did not tell them honestly the time table of when the relief will come to the blighted. Like 4 years to an exchange. 4 years from 2013? From today? Progressives should not think PO is the only way, it is just one means. They should be open to other ideas. Mr P, have you not been open for months now? What do you have to show? Belittling the Public Option and the Progressives as extreme left who are stuck on this one idea. Is this a way to display your postparitsanship? I did not know that a compromise from Single Payer to making the Public Plan Optional is some kind of extreme left philosophy (horror of horrors some one labels him as a socialist). Do you think this approach will unite your stray dogs and right wing saboteurs to support a sham bill to put a feather in The Democratic Party cap. Mr P we have all bought into the importance of your three core objectives and your touching empathy for 14000 losing insurance every day and hundreds dying and going bankrupt. What I do not see is your commitment to selling and pushing the only real means to get there, i.e. the Public Option. I do not see you showing clearly how you will take care of the blighted, you so eloquently described in the campaign and continue to do so, in a timely and effective (in terms of $ & c from their pockets) way. Imagine the number of people losing their insurance, 14000*1400, tens may be hundreds of thousands dying or going bankrupt while waiting for 2013.
- doubleaseven
September 10, 2009 at 6:33am