President Obama on health care last night
Posted on February 25th, 2009 by Jason Rosenbaum in Solutions that Work
 |
The highlights:
The cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough.
This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, one million more Americans have lost their health insurance. It is one of the major reasons why small businesses close their doors and corporations ship jobs overseas. And its one of the largest and fastest-growing parts of our budget.
Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold.
This budget…includes an historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American. Its a commitment thats paid for in part by efficiencies in our system that are long overdue. And its a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come.
Now, there will be many different opinions and ideas about how to achieve reform, and that is why Im bringing together businesses and workers, doctors and health care providers, Democrats and Republicans to begin work on this issue next week.
I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But…let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.
RIGHT ON TARGET! History will note the Barrack Obama is the latter day counterpart of Canadian Premier Tommy Douglas who ramroded single payer universal health care in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan 40 years ago in spite of vicious opposition of the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian private insurance industry. I hope the vision of Tommy Douglas will prevail in America 40 years later!
I wish Obama well and hope he will emulate the great example of Canadian Premier Tommy Douglas. Better late than never. Douglas was tough and Barrack must be equally tough.
Rah, rah, rah, for the home team….
Unfortunately, Obama does not support single payer health care. Of course, you guys are fine with that. But I agree with Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the chief economic advisor for Bill Clinton, that single payer is the only real alternative.
I think that implementation of the Democratic platform plan, which is your plan, is a big mistake. It will cost us hundreds of billions of dollars more than single payer, and it is NOT universal!
So I am not so excited about this major capitulation to the insurance industry. Or maybe you think your coverage will not be as good as you have now, like covering acupuncture and such. But there would be nothing to prevent you from getting, at your own expense, a supplemental coverage that offers coverage beyond the single payer plan. You say it's not politically possible? I thought that's what the insurance industry was saying. Who are you, anyway?
Why doesn't your comment page work?
Which comment page? This one definitely works…
Every other industrialized nation in the world has some form of universal health care. Why can't America? Why can't every man, woman & child in America be covered by Medicare, paid for with a simple payroll tax? Recent history has proven the stock market and banking industries cannot police themselves in the face of personal greed. Health insurance companies are no different. Right now the health care machine and the pharmaceutical industry is literally bankrupting America. The Congress appears to be more cioncerned with getting re-elected than with fixing the health care mess. Why should they care? They have the best health care in the nation.
Carolann Hennen
Southern Oregon Health care Reform Coalition