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Obama Shows (Some) Progressive Spine
In a plain-spoken, at times tough, and masterful address to a joint
session of congress, President Obama spoke in pragmatic and moral terms
about the importance of healthcare reform as a test of our nation's
character. He called for sweeping action, including most notably
outlawing insurance companies from denying coverage because of
preexisting conditions. Security and stability was a refrain. A call to
end children's games was an almost biblical subtext as the President
spoke powerfully of the need to move beyond the ugly circus of August.
"The time for bickering is over. Games are over."
The speech still had a bipartisan flavor, but with a progressive spine.
On the imperative of a public option, Obama did not fully satisfy. The insurance exchange idea confused more than it clarified in explaining the role of the public option. Why will it take four years? Essentially, it's a compromise because Congress doesn't have the guts to raise money to do it more quickly. There may be some benefits up front, but there are still more questions than answers. What is clear is that the fight must still be waged to push through a public option --already a part of four of the five bills in Congress--if we're to get an essential component of genuine and effective healthcare reform. After all, the public option is already a pragmatic all-American compromise (choice and competition). Medicare for All--or single-payer-was never on the table.
Obama likes to say that the perfect is the enemy of the good. But what if the weak is the enemy of the good? And the shout-outs to the left were at times patronizing--as if he had to do triangulation 2.0
Still, Obama's invocation of history was powerful. When he pointed out that Congressman Dingell's father had proposed very similar legislation in 1943 it was great symbolism and great politics. In invoking the great reform Presidents--Roosevelt and Johnson--and the battles they waged against reactionary lobbies in fighting for universal health care, Obama placed himself in the American pantheon.
"I am not the first person to take up the cause of health care but I am determined to be the last."
Despite the days of right wing rage, and the metastasizing lies and misinformation, Obama said, perhaps with Machiavellian intention, that he would still seek common ground in the weeks ahead. "But, know this," Obama insisted. "I will not waste time with those whose calculation is that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it." And in that masterful phrase, he placed the burden on those who would seek to cripple, or kill, healthcare reform to damage his young presidency. Obama was most feisty in saying " instead of honest debate, we've seen scare tactics," and his "call out"of those (especially those who are spooking seniors) who would misrepresent his plan.
And then there were those male, pale and stale Republicans. South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson's shout in the hall of "liar" showed that the megaphones of misinformation are not isolated to the delusional FOX studios of Glenn Beck or the padded radio chamber of Rush Limbaugh. Obama rightly called the GOP out for their hypocrisy in defending Medicare, a program they have labored hard to cripple.
There was much pragmatic talk--of security and stability and bending the curve and deficit neutrality and finding savings within existing Medicare system. But it was when Obama spoke of Senator Kennedy and the larger moral imperative of healthcare reform that this became a great speech. One for the history books, in fact. Obama reminded us that this reform was, as Kennedy believed, "the great unfinished business of our society." That it is a "moral issue" about the fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country. It is about the human condition, about the history of our progress of our nation.
In many ways, it was Obama's fullest, most eloquent and formal defense of liberalism and the clearest exposition of his view of government's role. It was not the full-fledged antidote to Reagan's decades of government-is-the-problem conservative narrative. Yet Obama spoke eloquently of a new and progressive role for government. We must build on it.
There is work ahead to fulfill the promise of shaping a more humane and healthier future. But on the evening of September 9th, eight years after President George W. Bush spoke to a joint session of Congress, President Obama has set us on a path we must seize in the critical days and weeks ahead.
- Posted in
86 Comments so far
Show AllI predict that this plan will be as effective in reigning in healthcare costs as Gramm Rudmann was in curbing the deficit.
Vague policies for the public, a bonanza for insurance companies in terms of mandates and four years (at least)before those of us who don't have private insurance will be able to purchase a public option; that is no way to solve a crisis. By the way, if you are already in the clutches of private insurance, you will not be eligible for the public option (how that little detail remained under wraps for so long is beyond me).
Imagine saying after 9/11 that we will develop a plan to address Al Quaida that will be deployed four years from now.
Imagine a plumber you hired to fix a broken pipe telling you that he knows how to fix the leak and leaks are terrible but it will be 3 months before he thinks its appropriate to do so.
Barry O's triangulation is not just perilous for him it is moral treason to the country
Step 1: Obama gives good speech
Step 2: Obama screws people on the alter of corporate profits
Step 3: Repeat
That would be funny if it weren't too true.
I can't believe Obama said that uninsured people would be forced to buy insurance from the private sector. What a bonanza to the healthcare corporations. Yeah, let's just force people to give those bloodsuckers more money.
It seems to me they would want young, healthy people paying into a government insurance public option pool. That would increase revenue, since younger people are by and large healthier.
He's a good speaker, but let's come down off this high and look at what he said.
Based on the 9/9/09 speech one can onlt conclude that criminalizing individuals and business that refuse to submit to insurance company extortion is the centerpiece of Obamacare.
Ted Kennedy will be turning over in his grave if they name this legislation after him as suggested by some politicians. The bill will most appropriately be titled: NO INSURER LEFT BEHIND, NO PATIENT LEFT A DIME.
Good one! I hope that sayng goes viral. It says it all!
Crooks and corpies stand in line,
All prettied up to cover their slime,
NO INSURER LEFT BEHIND, NO PATIENT LEFT A DIME!
The trade off: mandatory insurance purchases for individuals in exchange for new rules for insurance companies.
We know how government enforces rules on individuals. They fine us, and confiscate tax returns.
But, how are the new rules for health insurance companies supposed to be enforced? By a federal agency? The U.S. Justice Department? The courts? What are the penalties? Are there any teeth in these rules? What's to keep industry from scoffing at the rules, just like they scoff at hundreds of federal regulations currently on the books?
I think the mandates on individuals will be the only law remaining in ten years. The insurance industry will have eviscerated the rest of the "reform," and will still be practicing "delay and deny until you die."
It looks like another Obama screw job to me.
Progress is a product seen through the eyes of the beholder. When it comes to sham progressives like Katrina speaking her one size fits all or Democratic Apologetic the spin follows a predictable script. The public option died months ago despite the lip-ervice Obama pays to the sheeple. What we will get is what they call "Triggers" and I invite anyone to read a CD article on the subject. Triggers are non-sense.
Any health reform without a robust public option is not reform; in fact, it will be another win for the status quo who own poor little Katrina and her hero Obama.
Just read the nauseating gushing in the first paragraph--and it continues throughout despite those occassional acknowledgements of a regretable undercurrent.
Par from The Nation.
Now the battlecry is reduced to "No denial for pre-existing conditions!" like it is a sweeping reform of, what is it Obama refers to it now, "health INSURANCE reform" instead of health CARE reform....as if we wouldn't notice.
At this point, how anyone continues to be swept away by Obama's simplistic soundbytes and shallow pronouncements about fighting for something are hopeless. Winning for Obama is a tad better than complete capitulation--and there is still the question of whether it is really complete complicity, which occassionally interjects itself even into vanden Heuvel's swooning--and he hasn't "won" anything yet.
Truthfully, Obama is "spooking seniors", vanden Heuvel, because he is gutting Medicare but it is going on very quietly beneath the radar("finding savings within existing Medicare system") while all the sound and fury is being directed at non-issues. Do your damn research, Obama is cutting Medicare for the poorest and most vulnerable.
But don't let anyone rain on your pathetic cheerleading parade.
The first step to changing anything is in acknowledging that things aren't changing and actually require opposition not starstruck fantasies.
"The first step to changing anything is in acknowledging that things aren't changing and actually require opposition not starstruck fantasies."
"Acknowledging" - LOL, KVH is either too stupid to 'acknowledge' or too bought to care.
"In a plain-spoken, at times tough, and masterful address to a joint session of congress, President Obama spoke in pragmatic and moral terms about the importance of healthcare reform as a test of our nation's character."
I wish I could throw my shoes at Katrina vanden Heuvel for this crap. But I know all shoe-throwing should be saved for the President of the United States.
Is The Nation becoming the new New Republic?
"Yet Obama spoke eloquently of a new and progressive role for government."
Yeah, thats about all this little weasel can do--talk.
I'm expecting any day now that Obama will reach up to his forehead, pull down his skin and reveal one George W. Bush.
Intellectuals can't get together on anything.
So true!
One point that Naomi Klein made the last time (Cooper Union) I went to hear her speak -- academics/intellectuals need to decide which side they are really on!
I listened to Obama's speech last night, but I must have missed that "progressive spine".
All I can say at this point is that I hope that the republican version of the healthcare reform will pass - end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own. That way at least people will have no more illusions about how much they pay for their insurance (not to confuse with healthcare), which maybe will finally help start the conversation about a real healthcare reform, which will be easily passed by President Anthony Weiner in 2012, one day after the inauguration. Well, that would actually make it 2013.Amen.
"bipartisan flavor..., progressive spine..., powerful....
Ohhh, I can see the audience swooning in the aisles now!
Still got no universal healthcare though, do you?
Vern September 10th, 2009 11:36 am: -Now the battlecry is reduced to "No denial for pre-existing conditions!"
I can see it coming: "no denial for valid credit cards!"
"After all, the public option is already a pragmatic all-American compromise (choice and competition). Medicare for All--or single-payer-was never on the table. " Why not?
What's wrong with KVH?
I was speaking with my former doctor the other day (who charges quite a bit less than other physicians, due partly he says, to his refusal to accept insurance claims and the paper work associated with them), and he doesn't believe that health care is a right but a privilege (I do not believe he is alone here among physicians). However, unlike other doctors he displays his charges up front for all to see, and believes that it would reduce costs if other physicians did the same. It is not by accident but by design that they don't, and prevents patients from effectively 'shopping around.'
I appreciated his honesty, though I don't agree with a lot of what he said. What he did say, though, is VERY important: that physicians could make a good living without charging so much and ordering so many unnecessary tests (the threat of being sued is a factor here).
Even at a reasonable rate, health care DOES cost. However, many doctors charge much more than they NEED to to make a decent living (taking into account their liability insurance and overhead). This doctor does not believe in socialized care, but does prove that quality care [he is an excellent physician] can be delivered at much lower prices when doctors are left to practicing medicine and not buried in endless insurance claim paperwork. He also proves that a more efficient system of delivering care CAN be instituted, single payer or otherwise.
You can argue that public education and libraries are not a right either.
It is all about the kind of people we want to be. Apparently Europeans, those evil socialists, are more deserving in the way of rights than us less entitled Americans.
Do we spend all our wealth subsidizing the extravagant lifestyles and profit-making of the super wealthy or do we provide for the neediest and most vulnerable among us?
Do we pool our resources for the common good? That is the evil socialism. After all the ongoing tales of the failure of the marketplace and the corruption of greedy excesses causing suffering and want- all at our expense-it is a danger, a threat to those powers that we would work together for the benefit of all rather than just the already powerful and priviliged few.
I think we could have a great 'socialized' system, if it is non-profit (except for physicians pay and the actual cost of the care itself), but we should also be willing to pay more if we can, be it through taxes of other means. Health care should be run ONLY for the benefit of the sick as well as the prevention of illness (and provide reasonable reimbursement for the providers), not for the profit of insurance companies. Is it possible? Certainly the collective will is there.
Nice posting.
Your Dr. is correct. A little Tort Reform goes a long way, its reduced our medical expenses in Texas...but not the Insurance rates.
He is correct that Health Care is not anyones right. No matter the sophistry, there is no inherent right to Health Care than there is a right to demand your neighbors to feed your children. It can be the right thing to do at times, but there is simply no "right" involved. You cannot manufacture "rights" out of thin air.
Of course a better delivery system, a lower cost system, a full coverage system could be designed. But not while extremists on both sides entrench themselves like children on their little bit of turf.
I decided the other day when I was attacked for being a bit overjoyed for getting a donation to our food pantry that there are people that are so far gone they can't see reality. Their reasoning is faulty and childish, but they represent some of the mainline thinking in the Progressive group though. So let me say now, these type folks, Katrina being one, have cost Liberals their best chance in my lifetime.
Obama sealed the fate of either Health Care or the Democratic party last night. It only remains to see which he has destroyed.
Tort "reform" is just another Republican screw job. When doctors and hospitals amputate the wrong limb, or inject 1000 times more of a drug than was ordered, or spread deadly viruses with unsanitary practices, they SHOULD be held accountable.
The real problem is the AMA and FDA threatening and prosecuting doctors who cure diseases with alternative therapies, and without resorting to barbaric, ineffective and obscenely expensive orthodox treatments. The monopolists are doing enough harm already, without giving them a get-out-of-jail-free card on top of it.
You are exactly right. Only a tiny percentage of the people who are injured by medical malpractice ever sue, and it is very, very hard to win a medical malpractice case because juries are biased in favor of their idea of godlike doctors.
Tort "reform" is just a way to help health practitioners evade responsibility for the preventable harm that they cause, and to protect insurance companies from having to pay out money.
Here's a new light for you, Henry
In any industrial society, where the sources of diseases are often untrackable and are the result of many corporate and government decisions, health care must be a human right.
Katrina baby, I thought You were smarter than to fall for the super con man! Obama has sold out to big pharma and the insurance companies. What spine! The headline should read: OBAMA SHOWS NO PROGRESSIVE SPINE.
Spooking seniors:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/obam-s10.shtml
What a corrupt journalist, KVH. There was never anything remotely progressive about our beloved Uncle Tom in the White House and there never will be.
How foolish Democratic voters are to fall for a good speech. Words mean nothing when Democrats (or their clones the Republicans) are concerned.
The rights of capital continue to rule over the human right to healthcare. God bless America, the beast of capitalism!
It was interesting to see some politicians who bill themselves as "progressives" crooning and fawning at the brilliance of Obama's speech. I consider myself a progressive and found little if anything at all that was progressive in Obama's speech. In my mind, it kept reinforcing "No CEO Left Behind."
Katrina's watered down tripe reminds me a character type of a syndrome I like to call, the Harvey Wunkerpud situation.
Harvey sub-exists much like the domesticated animals he keeps in bondage for pleasure or food, while not recognizing he is one of them, also in chains. Therefore, he is incapable of true compassion for himself or for the beasts he tortures because this type of compassion would require a formidable look from without, from outside his senseless condition. Additionally, and because his bondage does not bother him or he is simply not aware of it, he fails to recognize political or social dissent. The right to dissent or to revolt peacefully or with blood, against the cancerous, corporate, gluttonous, materialistic ethos seems to him the exclusive enterprise of some historical ancestor, "the Patriot." Finally, Harvey refuses to take responsibility for his freedom, or to be responsible for anything worthwhile and good. True rebellion, righteous rebellion, is seen, alternatively, as bad form, a vice, or only to be employed as a means to insure that the easy and disposable life he is addicted to continues. Living perpetually in a self imposed cage, he is anxious of the very idea of the cage's door opening for good. As such, Harvey will bite the very hand of his liberator. Plenty of food, much diversion are nevertheless accepted.
Like the film Groundhog day, Harvey wakes up each day to the same surreal and alienated life, parrots the expected script and meaningless text, moves from one thermostatically stable environment to another, pushing buttons, pulling levers, and punching cards. He has transformed himself into a wheeled cyborg, half human, half car, for whom walking is seen as a form of rebellion, or deviant act he just will not tolerate.
He has substituted moral or righteous indignation with acting out behavior, violence, passive aggressive agitation, incessant complaining, or insufferable whining. His entire vocabulary comes either at the promptings of his handlers in the Democratic or Republican parties, or is punctuated by a tendency of self-pity and injured ego dramatics. The crescendo of his speech covers the spectrum of incessant cheerleading, to insufferable whining if one dissents, and therefore extends easily to projection, stereotype, and personal prejudice. The world is always wrong for Harvey because of too many environmentalists, progressives, living and working where he is used to cheerleading the cause, or about every other thing that captures his limited attention and seeking to undermine authentic transformative outcomes.
Of course, we cannot blame him for this. Harvey lacks an understanding of how his own consciousness is affected by propaganda and ideology. He lacks any understanding of the way language is crafted by others, or how technical jargons make many important facets of life interruptible into a cohesive matrix that might inform him in ecological, social, and/or mythical terms. Such is Harvey's predicament and social plight or interminable existential angst against which he is a victim of his own ignorance.
This is the age any true progressive has to compete these days.
KVH,
I want some of whatever you have been smoking. It apparently was laced with a hallucinogen because that is some serious delusional thinking you have going on.
Why do people keep referring to PO as if he has no spine? He has plenty of spine when it comes to the wars, bank bailouts, and tossing every single group who helped get him elected under the bus.
I thought he slapped the progressives across the face when he made his comment about single payer vs. republican nonsense. Single payer is too radical??? That comment and the one about the health insurance industry serves a purpose told me all I needed to hear. We are screwed.
reposted trying to edit.deleted.
saveyourself,
That is the same thought that came to me about the author as I ventured into this article after posting my comment, about discounting those of us who want to end the failed prohibition on all forms of hemp, cannabis, etc. This was after BO's soliciting our comments, which proved to be the most popular topic, for his "what do you want me to change, I'm game" websites. When he rolled his eyes at the question, post-inauguration, that was finally posed to him publicly and said he wasn't going to waste his time that way, I had already known everything I needed to know about BO. After that I'm thinking "He's probably lying about ever having done the smoke, because he shows a distinctive lack of "consciousness". He just wanted to tap into anyone who wasn't paying attention all along and thought that admitting to copping a buzz would make him cool enough to vote for. "
Katrina probably drifts off to sleep every night after the chardonnay, drooling into her pillow over her 'bad boy boyfriend', waiting for his occasional booty call.
KVH's article raises an interesting question: Is the author really as naive as she appears, or is she a conscious party to Obama's healthcare deception?
Wily She has a secret plan!
All you progressive guys need to take it a little easy on KVH. You look at Obama and see a 90% empty glass; she sees one 10% full of an intoxicating liquor that she imbibes before she prepares the pages of The Nation with these peons of praise for her fantasy of what kind of animal is a vertebrate.
Here's most of a comment from the equally insipid Peter Drier article posted here today. Great minds thinking alike?
I hope you haven't started to describe Obama's No Insurer Left Behind travesty as "Deadicare", because I just thought it up!
____________________________________
...Like Katrina vanden Heuvel and the fatuous Joan Walsh (Salon), the old-school moderate liberals remain dazzled by Obama's pirouettes whenever he prances down the runway.
No sensible person really expected Obama to snatch health care from the brink of its disastrous course by boldly putting forth single-payer-- or even the placebo "public option"-- as the mandatory centerpiece on the table.
No, instead Obama hammered a few more shiny nails into universal Amerikan health CARE's coffin, and pimped his No Insurer Left Behind scam.
It's very gratifying that the soft liberal crowd remains "half-full", but if they ever dry out, they're going to need REAL health care for their vicious hangovers.
· Yr Obd't Servant
"Deadicare" -- beautiful!!
Also works as "Dedicare" (as in dedicated to mandatory insurance profits)!
Jerry, I wish I had read your comment before posting mine. Well worded.
Un-B-Fu(kin-leivable!
Read the comments above and you will find out exactly why the Progressive Cause fails so miserably even though the Vast Majority of Americans hold mostly Liberal views.
Y'all are so invested in your misery that you can't accept even the slightest bit of success. Or recognize sage advice when it's made available.
KVH has been an important and powerful voice for the most progressive program for twenty, thirty years, she edits the Nation, f'rchissake. And up until this article people here have championed her work and learned from it, been reinforced by her insight and encouraged that you weren't alone.
But now, she's junk, right?
What the Leftist Elites have missed, is that the center of this country started swinging back to the Left about 2005, slowly but it's been building, we've beaten back the Riech which, 5 years ago looked like it might be permanent. We're seeing the processes the Bushies put in place being unwound, yes, slowly, because they face intense, well funded opposition. There is no easy or quick way to achieve Progressive changes while we're still trying to deflect the incoming loads of excrement away from the fan.
And of course, Since the Left have been abusive to Obama since he was a Primary candidate and showed no where near the support that Moderates and Independents did, he really doesn't owe the Left anything. Neither does Congress.
The Leftist Elites have alienated the progressive politicians that they should be working with. Vanden Heuvel has learned what we all must, that This is a big, diverse country, that making things happen here takes time and money and lots of effort, that it takes compromise and patience and tolerance. There is no "wave a majic wand", this is the real world.
The Far Right have the same problem, they believe in majic too. And it didn't work for them either.
Name five issues you support Obama on. (I could use a laugh)
And what's with all the "majic"?
Oh yeah, the "real world." That's the one where two-thirds of Americans want a Canadian-style single-payer system, where 86% of Canadians prefer their system to private insurance, and where the chief obstacle to single-payer in the U.S. is Barack Obama.
Obama lies that single-payer would be "too disruptive," and omits the truth that LBJ instituted the highly successful, single-payer Medicare system in the 1960s in just 11 months (in an era before computers) without disruption.
No magic wand is needed. All it would take is some moral fiber from Obama, but he's more interested in campaign contributions and post public-life pay-offs. Maybe that's the "real world" you refer to.
Check your figures. 67% want a government run healthcare AS AN OPTION. When the choice element is removed, in several national polls, it drops well below 50%. The Peoples' Choice is Choice. That choice is Public Option. But this is a bullsh!t dicotomy anyway, the Anti-Rs want the Left to split over SP Vs PO but guess what, That's not what is being debated in Congress. The actual choice is between Public Option and no reform at all. And The Call of Progressive Caucuses in Congress for Progressive support on this to counter the massively funded, well organized astroturf operation that the 4Ps are waging is falling on deaf ears, see above. This specious debate has spun the Left Elite out into obscurity on this issue.
Just for a second, try this: Add up all the votes that Liberal and Left third parties, the Greens, et cetera, have polled in the past several election cycles. Totals about 3%. Now add up all the really crackedpottery rightwing parties polled, the Peace and Freedom Party, The American Party, the Libertarians, et cetera. Hey what do you know about 4%.
So if the hardcore, Rightwingnut Elite is about the same size as the Left Elite, how have they been so successful in advancing their agenda, while the Left have lost ground steadily since oh, say, 1977?
Could it be because they found that they had to work with a somewhat less pure ideological party in order to put it forward? Because you have to have at least a sizable plurality if not an outright majority to, first gain office and then to effect change.
Well a sizable majority that is considerably more progressive that the previous misAdministration, has wrestled the handles away from them, but do Progressives jump in? Join the drive?
NO, they desolve in Purity fights. It's pathetic, but as a longtime activist for progress, it's not surprising.
And by the way, Do you know what LBJ paid for MediCare?
VietNam.
He took the expensive customers off the hands of the insurance companies and the MIC got to suck one trillion dollars out of the Treasury, waste 45000 American lives, and estimated 2 million SouthEast Asians and left a landscape where people are STILL dying from landmines and toxic leftovers. Nice trade, huh?
But it got US MediCare in 11 months! YAY!
So, while your group reigns in numbers, people without insurance keep getting f***ed by the insurance companies. They get screwed by Wall St. to the tune of $23 trillion (the greatest upflow of wealth in U.S. history). We actually have sensible leaders like Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader who are infinitely more in touch with their constituents than your corporate-bought nitwits. Problem is, your group hoardes all of the media time and does not invite decent political leaders like Nader and Kucinich to the table because they can't raise enough f***ing money! What horseshit! You go cheerlead as much as you want, but when you no longer have health insurance or go broke, then what are you going to do? Keep defending the insurance companies, and our snake oil salesman for a President? Wake up!
CV, CAN you name five issues you support Obama on? (seriously, after your defense of the insurance industry I could really use a laugh) If that's too hard, how about three issues? (other than your agreement with Obama to safeguard insurance companies, of course)
I will settle for two!
Okay, just one issue?
Ah, the soft bigotry of low expectations-- it's not just a wingnut slogan any more!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Figures checked. Between 58% and 65% of Americans want single-payer, NOT an option. That's close to two-thirds.
Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, July 2009: 58% favor "having a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance through an expanded, universal form of Medicare-for-all."
New York Times/CBS News poll, February 2009: 59% say "the government should provide national health insurance."
Annals of Internal Medicine, Study of Physician Support of National Health Insurance, April 2008: 59% [of doctors] "support government legislation to establish national health insurance."
Associated Press-Yahoo Poll, December 2007: 65% say "the United States should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers."
CNN/Opinion Research Poll, May 2007: 64% think "the government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes."
And, by the way, Vietnam COST the treasury money, it didn't SAVE money. Medicare was a success in spite of Vietnam, not because of it, you dope.