Obama says Take One for the Team

By Joni Douglas

The president gave another stump speech yesterday, still promoting his version of health care reform. And of course, the audience loved it. Most Americans want health care reform. Americans across the country want reform to the health care system, but poll after poll show that they do not want this bill. When asked why they don’t like the health care bill, folks have been quite candid about it, stating that it is far too confusing, sounds way too complicated, costs way too much and they just don’t know enough about it.

As we watched and listened to the speech, we heard him talk about the need to reform health care to which the audience responded with a huge applause. And rightly so. We all want reform. He then touched on the same old talking points that we have listened to for over a year now, pre-existing conditions, the millions uninsured and the rising cost of insurance premiums. OK, we all agree that those are issues that do need to be addressed. Tell us more Mr. President. Tell us about the other points in the bill. It doesn’t take over 2,000 pages to cover just those two conditions. If you are not going to tell us, we must look to those that will. The opposition. The GOP has as many distinct arguments against this bill as the Democrats do for it and shouldn’t we know how they are addressed as well? You do want us to be fully informed about the entire bill, don’t you?

Although the intent here is not to keep discussing the bill; there are a few points that need to be made. We heard the Speaker say that even though the House previously voted to keep abortion funding out of the bill, they are now going to ignore that vote and keep that funding in the bill. Does that get explained away through talking points? The serious threat to seniors in this bill concerns all of us. The opposition has much to say about this while the Democratic talking points do not really reassure us. Cutting waste, in programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, to pay for this bill sounds like a good idea. But the government has not been able to contain costs in any of the previous decades or in any other federal programs. Now, all of a sudden, they say they can and will.

In his speech, Obama went on to remind folks why they decided to become Democrats in the first place. Not a bad approach. However, he went on to say how it is the Democrats who care about others, who have a sense of neighborliness, a sense of community, a willingness to help those down on their luck. Is he saying that this a Democrat thing only? What it sounds like he is really saying is that Republicans have no such compassion for their fellow man. Or is this just another attempt to insinuate and denigrate the opposition? He came out and actually accused the members of the Republican party of only looking out for themselves, as if opposing this bill means that they are against any health care reform at all. He knows as well as we do that this is just not true. The insinuation in his speech yesterday was calculatingly bi-partisan; damaging the good will and the courage of our Congressmen to oppose this bill and this administration.