As a conservative, I had a reasonably good response to the speech. This guy is up there with Reagan as a “great communicator”. As usual, the devil is in the details…
Yet a lot of promises were made, and little evidence was given to back them up. Eliminate fraud and waste? Why haven’t they done that already? Reducing costs? Since when has that been accomplished by the federal government?
At least the guy can speak in complete sentences… 
Healthcare reform is deader than Ted Kennedy.
Obama’s plan is paid for in monopoly money. A public option plan ain’t gonna pass the Senate, and the House ain’t gonna pass anything without a public option.
As to the speech, I give the delivery an A-, and the content a C-.
As I said, I am a conservative person. But when you read statistics like these:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure4-2009sep04,0,4503502.story
Where almost 40% of claims are rejected by the companies, something is wrong.
A lot of folks are “happy” with their insurance, meaning that folks with a fractured fibia are treated well, but folks with serious diseases that are expensive to treat, and are often rejected for purely BS reasons, of course you can get a good satisfaction rate. 85% like their health care? Well, they have issues that are easy to treat. Get cancer? The bastards will use every excuse to deny your coverage. Litigation is cheaper for them, and eventually you die. Problem solved.
Again, I am a conservative, but we need something to change here.
I did not comment on whether healthcare reform is needed. I said it ain’t happening. Unless there’s some sort of major dam-busting in the entrenched positions in the Senate and in the House, no bill is going to pass.
Yet Pelosi is claiming that they have the votes. Tip O’neil would have had this a done deal by now. The Democrats, apparently, have zero party discipline at this time. They own the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, so what is the problem. Tip is rolling in his grave.
Well, you don’t expect evidence in a speech.
Unless you want to be taken seriously… :rolleyes:
Are you serious? He cited the CBO, what more do you expect?
“And if you’ll follow along with the chart on page 323, you can see the graph shows that the economic ramifications…”
Srsly dude. :rolleyes:
I didn’t see the speech (wrong time zone) but I have just looked at the transcript on the Whitehouse website and it doesn’t contain any phrases like that. And that’s the problem.
The President has promised three things:
The"Two out of three rule" says that he can only pick TWO of the above. If he chooses to give more people better care, fine. But costs will go up. If he chooses to cut costs while covering more people, great. But quality will go down. If he chooses to cut costs and improve quality, marvellous! But he’ll have to limit the number of people eligible for it.
When the American people say they want details, they mean they want to see the real, hard, nitty-gritty facts of precisely how this plan will be put together and paid for. Then they want to hear the other side’s response. Then they want to see what answers the President has for the pointed criticisms of the facts and numbers he has given. What they want, effectively, is for the President to stand up there and go through all the major aspects of his proposals step by step, with a fucking flip chart and selection of brightly colored markers if necessary “And we predict that this aspect of the proposal will cost X amount the first year and Y amount over the next ten years. We intend to raise this money by <insert funding proposals here>. Moving on to the next proposal etc…” They’ll be bored shitless by most of it but they’ll be interested in the part that affects them, and that’s what matters.
People are genuinely afraid of health care reform for one simple reason: The government has not clearly spelled out how it will be paid for and how they will be effected. Obama gave a little more substance than in previous speeches, but not enough to reassure people clamouring for hard facts and evidence.
Unless, of course, the current system is bad and wasteful enough that ANYTHING would be an improvement.
I’m not sure that’s true, but I can certainly see it as a possibility. 
The two out of three rule isn’t a rule. It’s a cute saying.
900 billion. Half paid through current slop in the system and half paid through taxes on the richest americans. The bill hasn’t been rolled together yet. What kind of detail do you want? The text of the bill will be available for review once it’s ready.
People are genuinely afraid because the republicans are lying to them about the bill.
Well, the Clinton administration did it, if you’re looking at federal expenditures as a percentage of GDP. If memory serves, total federal expenditures at the end of the Bush I presidency were about 21% of GDP, while they dropped to 18% of GDP at the end of the Clinton presidency and rose again under Bush II to about 20%.
How many Republicans does he need because that’s what the whole speech was about, give away just enough to get him over the line?
I’m not sure he HAS promised better care. I don’t recall him saying that we’ll cure your cancer more efficiently or set your broken bone any faster. So I pick 1 and 2. Next?
When have the American people said that they want details? I’ve heard endless criticisms about death panels, covering illegals, paying people for abortions, etc… but I honestly haven’t heard anyone yearning for details. Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure there are people who want details. I just don’t think a lack of details is the one monkey wrench in the whole process, and if we could just throw in a few charts, everything would fall into place.
Oh, and, of course, Obama ain’t Congress. It’s not his job to write the bill. Clinton made that mistake, as I recall, 15 years ago.
Wow. To paraphrase Barney Frank, what planet are you from? Are you talking about Americans, i.e., people from the United States of America on planet Earth? Or is there some super brainy race of aliens who also coincidentally are known as Americans? Because, from where I’m sitting (here on Planet Earth), most Americans would rather have their wisdom teeth removed sans anesthetic than watch such a spectacle. They would have flipped the channel about 12 seconds into it, so they’d miss the part that most affects them by about 7 hours.
Even if this were true, a primetime joint address of Congress is not the forum to go through a PowerPoint presentation with charts and numbers. And really, I don’t think that’s the “one simple reason” people are “afraid” of health care reform. I’d put a lack of hard numbers as reason #19 for fearing reform, right above “afraid the government will force us to get GPS chips with his mandatory public option.”
This is weird. I feel like I watched a different speech than the one PrettyVacant watched, or the one Lobohan read.
I liked the speech. It clarified a couple of things for me. I found it both more plain-spoken and passionate than many recent addresses of his, and I thought it clearly answered many of the common criticisms (those based mostly on reality or not). I know that many Americans are disappointed that it doesn’t go faster or farther, but I think it’s about the best we’re willing and able to do at this time.
It also made realize that I’m going to have to start educating myself about tort reform and indivdual mandates now. ggggrrrrrr I’ve been reading up on healthcare problems and proposals for what feels like years now, and there’s still so much to learn.
Oh, well. It’ll at least wait 'til tomorrow.
Not necessarily. Sure, there’s a cost incurred in covering more people and providing better care, but if you can lower costs in ways that don’t negatively impact care (eliminating waste, e.g. on things like unnecessary medical tests), and that cost lowering ends up being greater than the new costs you’re introducing, then total costs will go down.
I’m not saying that’s necessarily what would happen in this case, but you can’t say “It’s impossible to do all three of these things” without actually drawing up the specific plan and crunching some numbers.
I do think it’s a little unrealistic to expect that kind of detail in a televised speech. That’s more the sort of thing where you write up a paper and post it online for those who are really interested to read. Of course, it’s easier to do this once Congress has actually come to some sort of consensus on what the bill under consideration will look like . . . .
What bill? There *is no bill *to lie about!
No, people are genuinely afraid for the very good reason that none of them, including Congress itself, knows what the bill will be or what it will do. Congress and Obama are asking Americans to give them carte blanche in designing a health care program and to trust in them to get it right, and a blank check with which to pay for it all. Given Obama’s declining poll numbers and Congress’ already dismal poll ratings, it is stupid in the extreme for them to think that the American people will trust them to get anything right.
And then there’s the question of the slippery slope and the likelihood that whatever program occurs will be a foot in the door that leads to further government control over our lives as time goes by.
And then there are the questions of wait times and what will happen to acceptance and quality of treatments when the inevitable shortfalls in funding occur, like they have so far in every other government social progam that has ever existed. Food stamp allowances are a joke; welfare provided only the most scant and deprived type of existence for its recipients; and the only people who like Medicare are the ones who had no coverage to begin with. I’m not aware of a single person who had good health insurance during their business careers who is happy with Medicare now that they’re on it.
Oh, yeah…and did I mention that you have to pay around $100 a month out of the already meager return you get for the money you paid in to Social Security all your working life? That’s right, you have to cough up $100 a month out of your $800 or $900 or whatever it is just to obtain this substandard care. And then there’s the matter of finding decent doctors who will accept you as they don’t want to be burdened with the red tape, substandard fees and limited treatment options dictated by the Medicare system. And these are just the most obvious concerns. I could go on for pages if I wanted to get into all of them.
So as we can see, your allegations of peoples’ reticence on this subject being due to “Republican lies” are about as specious as the reasoning that led to them in the first place.
OK! I Haven’t yet read the rest of the thread beyond your post but, now we are getting somewhere. Let’s all just admit, please, that something has to be done with our healthcare system. That is the starting point. From there, the devil is totally in the details. But reforming all this wasteful and overly-expensive mess will need to include taking the insurance companies out behind the woodshed. If the GOP could only just admit that, we could see some progress. I mean-- they KNOW it is true.
This just isn’t an area where your can continue to squeeze insane profits out of ordinary people like consumer electronics or soft drinks… It just doesn’t make economic sense. IMO, everyone knows that at some level-- whether Democrat or Republican. We have to do something. And appeasing the insurance companies isn’t on the table. Sorry about that. As soon as everyone can be honest about this then we will make some progress.
I’ve said it several times before and no one ever responds to it because it isn’t a government solution, but why the hell not just pass legislation and create oversight to force insurance companies to live up to their obligations, if insurance company malfeasance is really such a problem. Why is government take-over the only solution?
And insurance companies do make insane profits. They operate on profit margins that are along the line of 3% of revenue, not much more than the 1 or 2% profit margin that most grocery stores operate on.
I would also quarrel with the meme that “something has to be done with our health care system.” Something needs to be done to make sure insurance companies operate honorably, and something needs to be done to try to get coverage for people who don’t have it, but most of the people in this country have health care that ranges from excellent to very good to just plain good – all of which are likely to be head and shoulders above whatever care would come from a government operated system. People who want a government solution because “something has to be done” are really people who would be happy to fuck things up terribly for seven people so that three can have substandard care if and when they need it. I don’t happen to think that “something must be done” if a system works very well for seven people out of ten, particularly when only a small portion of the three without coverage actually find themselves needing it.
The fact is that our system works very well and provides superb to good treatment for the overwhelming majority of our citizens. This does not sound like a hopelessly fucked up system to me. Instead of trying to get Republicans to admit the system is fucked up beyond salvation, why don’t Democrats start looking to solutions that will require insurance companies to operate like they should and to create some sort of system by which the relatively few people who find themselves needing care can obtain it without ruining things for everyone else?
