Distracting, Dissembling, Disappointing. Barack is Back!
By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
On the questions of health care and health insurance, the president’s speech offered no surprises and according to the polls, changed few if any minds. Obama at last openly likened his vision of health insurance to car insurance, in that everyone will be required by law to purchase the health insurance industry’s shabby and deceptive product. The president mentioned single payer, the solution favored by a majority of the nation’s physicians and people, and endorsed by more than a hundred members of the previous congress, but dismissed it with the specious claim that single payer would somehow “disrupt” the care people already receive.
The president grossly undermined congressional Democrats who support a “robust public option” by spelling out just how constricted, crippled and un-robust he intends to make any “public option.” Obama’s public option “…would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance….In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.” Five percent is less than 15 million people, far short of the 120 million or more that a not for profit public option would need in order to force downward the prices of drug companies and private insurers.
