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Another Big Speech

Sep 9, 2009

maha

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I intend to live blog the President’s speech tonight, paying especially close attention to what he might say about a public option. However, a big part of me agrees with Timothy Noah — enough with the speeches already. Call in the Dems and bust chops.

Every other day I read a news story that says support for “the President’s health care proposal” is slipping. But in a way this is nonsense, because it’s really hard to tell what “the President’s health care proposal” is at the moment, so what, exactly, are people not supporting?

Right now, the country seems divided between two sets of people who are not on board with what they think the President is proposing. One group doesn’t like what they think the President is proposing because it doesn’t go far enough to genuinely reform the system. The other group doesn’t like what they think the President is proposing because it’s the President — you know, the black guy — proposing it.

The first group for the most part understands the major possible components of a potential health care bill being discussed in Congress, but they (me included) worry that the public option is being thrown under the bus for the sake of getting something passed. (See Mike Madden, “Is Something Better Than Nothing on Healthcare?“)

The second group for the most part has no more understanding of the major possible components of a potential health care bill than they understand quantum physics, which is to say they wouldn’t recognize any of it if it rose up out of the sidewalk and bit their butts. They are objecting robustly to straw man proposals presented to them by the moneyed special interests who want to stop reform because the system as it is now is a gravy train for them.

So people are objecting all over the place. But these are not objections to health care reform. Instead, the objections come from a sense of foreboding about a looming dreadful thing. The dreadful thing may be that genuine health care reform will be once again kicked forward into an unknowable future, or that or death squads will be coming to shoot grandma. Take your pick.

Even the reasonably rational objection one hears about cost — i.e., I want reform but I’m afraid it will cost too much — overlooks the tangible fact that not reforming the system will cost even more. However, I can’t blame people much for not understanding that, since one rarely hears it explained in mass media.

President Obama could have done a much better job keeping people focused on the Real Issues, I think, but he’s not really a fire-in-the-belly sort, is he? He’s more cerebral, which is a quality I appreciate. But in the real world, keeping your head when everyone else is losing theirs usually makes you the mob’s first target. Put another way, in the land of the blind a one-eyed man is not king. He’s a freak.

Well, we’ll see what he says tonight.

20 Comments

Aisha 180 • Sep 9, 2009 @10:35 am

Just a mention here the President has not proposed anything but vague ideas, Nancy Pelosi has been the one to demand how to implement it, and she is not white by any stretch (not counting the botox), so please stop with the race card. and stick to facts, or at least opposing ideas.
maha • Sep 9, 2009 @10:56 am

Just a mention here the President has not proposed anything but vague ideas,

Pretty much what I just said.

Nancy Pelosi has been the one to demand how to implement it, and she is not white by any stretch (not counting the botox), so please stop with the race card.

There’s also the gender card and the “liberal elite” card, all of which amount to mob hysteria rather than reasons. So it hardly matters.

stick to facts, or at least opposing ideas

As soon as the Right makes some opposing ideas, I will discuss them. In fact, I may be the only blogger on the Web who has actually gone to the trouble of digging the Right’s plans out of the archives of the think tanks, and discussing them.
Aisha 180 • Sep 9, 2009 @11:48 am

Thank you for a return that does not at first start with personnel assault. One big question how are we to pay for this, given no one can give accurate accounts of funds already used in Tarp, Bailout, and cash for clunkers. But before you answer I just watched as Ben Nelson (D) Ne. made a (I thought) a very accurate description of what we need in a health care plan. this is a man that should be heard, I do not want bigger government just more effective laws and guidence.
Mark S. • Sep 9, 2009 @12:10 pm

I’ve got an idea for a “trigger.” If these reforms do not get us down to Switzerland’s level of health care spending (11.3%), we’ll go to single payer.
uncledad • Sep 9, 2009 @12:17 pm

I pretty much agree with the 2 groups but I would add a 3rd, the old folks who (many don’t seem to realize it) already have government run free healthcare. The wing-nut fear machine has efficiently and effectively scared the shit out of a good number of these folks and like it or not they do wield some significant political power. This is why the wing-nuts love the death panel bullshit so much, it really works with the under informed seniors, they vote and many of them watch FAUX news all god dam day long. So in my opinion this is the group that all the “bluedogs” and “moderates” seem to be afraid of. It seems many seniors opinion is: I earned my free healthcare and fuck the rest of ya!
BPx3 • Sep 9, 2009 @12:41 pm

“But in the real world, keeping your head when everyone else is losing theirs usually makes you the mob’s first target.”

Very well put.

Obama is highly intelligent and, so far, has been a generally good president. He seems very much at home in the role of organizer/mediator/conciliator. There are times, however, when mediation and conciliation doesn’t work. Times like these. Times when the general welfare and financial health of our nation is held hostage by psychopaths in business suits. In my opinion, if Obama is going to make the transition from good president to great president, he’s going to have to expand his comfort zone to include the confrontational, FDR-style role of “welcoming their hatred.”
joanr16 • Sep 9, 2009 @1:05 pm

Nancy Pelosi… is not white by any stretch….

I really have to ask Barney Frank’s question here; on what planet would someone write something as ridiculous as that?

The obsession with Obama among the ragers is very obviously based on race; it’s evident in their epithets, their signage, and their threats. There have been no “opposing ideas,” just a lot of deranged screaming (and bizarre commentary). Those are the facts. Scary to people in denial, I know. Too bad.
maha • Sep 9, 2009 @1:18 pm

One big question how are we to pay for this

The question you need to be asking is how we can pay to continue the system we have already. Projections are that our present “system” will cost us more down the road than any of the proposals. (I made this point in the post; it’s generally a good idea to read my posts before you comment on them.)

Keep in mind that estimated cost for current proposals in many cases is not spending in addition to what we’re spending now. It’s often a matter of taking money we’re already spending on health care and allocating it in a different way.

You don’t say exactly what Ben Nelson proposed that you like, but Ben Nelson is an idiot, IMO. He needs to be replaced.
joanr16 • Sep 9, 2009 @1:44 pm

Aisha, I live in Nebraska. Ben Nelson receives huge campaign donations from the health-insurance industry. It’s his constituency. He doesn’t represent the interests of the people of Nebraska, where farmers and ranchers are self-employed and at the sticky end of the health-insurance lollipop.

I do not want bigger government just more effective laws and guidence.

One (quite serious) suggestion: try a dictionary, for starters. It contains all sorts of guidance on the English language. For example, there’s a big difference between a “personnel attack” and a “personal attack.” That’s partly why your comments don’t make a lot of sense.
moonbat • Sep 9, 2009 @2:21 pm

Another great article by Robert Reich, Lessons From History on Health Care Reform gives a fascinating, hard to find history on how health care plans changed through each presidency, beginning with FDR. Even those presidencies that ostensibly failed to enact any health care legislation shaped the landscape of the debate for later generations. Of course I want as much intelligent reform as possible from Obama, but there is such a thing as losing strategically, and Reich’s article does a good job at explaining what this has meant historically.
Bonnie • Sep 9, 2009 @2:47 pm

I really don’t believe the cost should be anything to worry about. After all, no one got concerned about taxpayers paying trillions of dollars to murder the Iraqi people and torture prisoners we took in that illegal and immoral war. I think we should be willing to spend trillions to make America a nation of healthy people. It is the only thing that makes sense. Those against health care reform are mostly worried that it will be a success; and, then, they will have to admit that Obama (despite being a black man) was smart and caring to work towards health care for all and succeed.
uncledad • Sep 9, 2009 @3:10 pm

“Those against health care reform are mostly worried that it will be a success; and, then, they will have to admit that Obama (despite being a black man) was smart and caring to work towards health care for all and succeed.”

You got that right!
felicity • Sep 9, 2009 @4:17 pm

uncledad – my medicare coverage is deducted from my monthly social security check which doesn’t exactly make it ‘free.’ Also, most medicare recipients have additional coverage with a private insurer having been advised that to not have it can lead to mega coverage problems. Mine costs me $250/month and that plus that wonderful??? medicare part something to cover drug costs plus the deduction from my SS probably adds up to about $400/month.

Oldies like I am actually believe that medicare is free? What planet are they living on?
DoubleCinco • Sep 9, 2009 @4:42 pm

If it is true that fear is behind most hostility then the outcomes feared by the inciters and manipulators of the birthers, deathers & ragers are the loss of..what? Ultimately, the answer can only be dominance of the country’s politics and the resulting power.

A friend of mine who is mostly self-educated asked this question. Get in a blimp and go up a thousand feet–look down. What you see is a stadium and two teams and all the concessions. I want to know, he said, who the hell is this game being played for? Who owns the frickin’ stadium, who collects the gate receipts and who the bloody hell keeps this dehabilitating contest going?
moonbat • Sep 9, 2009 @5:06 pm

re the plan’s cost, this is from the Reich article cited earlier:

…Presidents who have been most successful in moving the country toward universal health coverage have disregarded or overruled their economic advisers. Plans to expand coverage have consistently drawn cautions or condemnations from economic teams in every administration, from Harry Truman’s down to George W. Bush’s. An exasperated Lyndon Johnson groused to Ted Kennedy that “the fools had to go to projecting” Medicare costs “down the road five or six years.” Such long-term projections meant political headaches. “The first thing, Senator Dick Russell comes running in, says, ‘My God, you’ve got a one billion dollar [estimate] for next year on health. Therefore I’m against any of it now.” Johnson rejected his advisers’ estimates and intentionally lowballed the cost. “I’ll spend the goddamn money.” An honest economic forecast would most likely have sunk Medicare.

It’s not so much that presidential economic advisers have been wrong — in fact, Medicare is well on its way to bankrupting the nation — but that they are typically in the business of thinking small and trying to minimize risk, while the herculean task of expanding health coverage entails great vision and large risk. Economic advice is important, but it’s only one source of wisdom.

Yet since Johnson, presidents have found it increasingly difficult to keep their economists at bay, mainly as a result of the growth of Washington’s economic policy infrastructure. Cost estimates and projections emanating from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, both created during the Nixon administration, have bound presidents within webs of technical arguments, arcane rules and budget limits. To date, Democratic presidents have felt more constrained by this apparatus than Republicans, perhaps because they have felt more of a need to prove their cost-cutting chops…
Pat Pattillo • Sep 9, 2009 @5:19 pm

To Pat Morrison’s:

“The anti-healthcare-reformers’ plan? Little more than ‘keep your fingers crossed that you don’t get sick‘”

I’d add:

“The anti-healthcare-reformers’ plan? I’ve got mine so figure out how to get a good job or go “F***” yourself”

…and that from those who lost all the jobs in their financial meltdown and created the situation by which government had to spend itself silly to avert a catastrophe of biblical proportions (which they now blame everyone but themselves for).

Sorry for al the *’s but that has been been the core of Republican platforms for as long as I can remember…the “Tough S***” plank….and “ask not what a government can do for its citizens but rather how the opportunities you’ve been given and exploiting government can be leveraged for old #1″

I’d keel over if I ever heard a conservative wish for all others a fraction of what they wish for themselves.

And Aisha, which personnel were assaulted? Do you always preemptively scold people you don’t know about race when they don’t have a single race card in their deck? That’s not nice and might be a little prejudiced. Thinly veiled racism lurks behind a great deal of the hysteria being generated over every little thing Obama does. That is oberving the race card being played, and acknowledging that should not be confused for playing it. Where have you been? Racism is a reality of this great nation of ours. Support of xenophobic, right wing, anti-immigration nuts is one of a host of reasons why the Republicans are losing the Hispanic vote. That is what playing the race card gets you every time.
c u n d gulag • Sep 9, 2009 @6:03 pm

I’m sick of all of these people.
I’m really sick of those on the offensive.
I’m really sick of those on the defensive.
I’m truly sick of not being able to tell the one from the other of the above.
I’m sick of the argumentss.

I’m sick of the accusations.
Their lier’s weary me.
“Our” truth(er’s) confuse me.
Our lier’s confuse me,
Their truth(er’s) tire me…
The only way to tell the truth is
Determined by which end of the dollar you’re on.
And, as long as you’re on the recieving end,
You’re on the right end, ain’t ya?!?
s • Sep 9, 2009 @7:05 pm

Bonnie, no problem with any of the unfunded tax breaks for the rich either. I think in the past when repugs passed the looted budget over to the dems, the dems would raise taxes and try to get the government back on firm footing. After a few years of the republicans screaming tax and spend, the repugs would be voted back in and trash our economy again. This time is different. The repugs didn’t time it right. The mess they made didn’t show up just after the election, it showed up just before the election.

Pat, I work with repugs and it is stunning what they come up with. One person I work with day after day says if the gov. is involved it is a mess. No healthcare yadda yadda.. day after day… whelp.. the other day he said “when the government is involved it is a mess” and not an hour later… he was saying he got his house refinanced through a government program to keep him from losing it.
I was shocked speechless. He doesn’t even notice that he is benefitting from the government he sneers at.
Doug Hughes • Sep 9, 2009 @7:51 pm

“One big question how are we to pay for this…”

Aeisha – here’s a few facts. The estimated total cost of some of the proposed plans is 1 Trillion over 10 years. Thats 100 million per year. The president suggests that 70 Billion per year can be found in the exidting budget, so that leaves us with 30 Billion per year. There are about 300 Million people in this country which makes the math easier. the cost per person of the health care proposal (House version) is about $100 per person per year. Suppose the CBO and/or President Obamama bot it wrong by 100% – $200 per year. That’s still less than $17 per month per person to provide universal health care. Do the NUMBERS.

Am I suggestiong that we are all going to see that $20 per month tax hike? No – if the tax was distributed by income 90% would fall on the top 10%. That’s where the screams, crying andl lies are coming from. There’s a bunch of greedy bastards out there who would rather poor people DIE than they pay their share of the cost.

And though you may be a nice, well-intentioned fool, you are a sucker for these bastards who will NEVER want for health care – but they will throw YOU under the bus when your time comes and you get sick.
Aisha 180 • Sep 9, 2009 @8:07 pm

[Deleted by maha. Newbies, especially newbies with nothing to add to the conversation, don't get to insult the regulars.]