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Obama’s Reprehensible Rhetoric Against Single-Payer
When Barack Obama gave his “this is it” speech on health care reform on March 3, he once again swerved out of his way to hit advocates of a single-payer system.
He said: “On one end of the spectrum, there are some who have suggested scrapping our system of private insurance and replacing it with government-run health care. Though many other countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical nor realistic.”
You can argue about whether it is realistic politically but there should be no question whatsoever that it’s practical in the sense of being functional. It works well in other countries, including Canada, and there is no reason it can’t work well here. Canada’s health outcomes, and the health outcomes of every other advanced industrial country with government-run systems, are superior to ours.
Maybe Obama was using the “neither, nor” construction to try to strengthen his weak and illogical opposition to single-payer and even to a robust public option like Medicare for all who want it—and 65 percent of the American people do want that kind of a public option.
There is not that much difference between “practical” and “realistic” if by both he meant to say politically possible. I suppose he could have really stretched the sentence out by saying “government-run health care . . . would be neither practical nor realistic nor feasible nor possible nor doable nor achievable nor viable.” But it would all mean the same thing. At bottom, he didn’t want to expend any political capital for it, or even for the robust public option.
Instead, he exploited advocates of a single-payer system as a foil to say, in not so many words, “I’m not an extremist like they are.”
He juxtaposed them with Republicans who want to “loosen regulations on the insurances companies.” And he did so in order to try to claim the middle ground, on the false and facile assumption that the middle ground is always the best ground.
Here’s how he put it: “I don't believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America.”
By damning “government bureaucrats,” Obama played right into the hands of the anti-government crowd and made any durable expansion of health care coverage all the more difficult. He also insulted every single federal employee in the Medicare and Medicaid and VA and Indian health programs.
This was reprehensible rhetoric.
- Posted in
180 Comments so far
Show AllWhat does he care he has great Gov't health care for life along with the Congress. It's good enough for them but NOT the rest of us because they might mean dissing his contributers the Health Ins. mafia and related swindlers like Big Pharma and the Hospitals. The truth is Obama has clearly shown he's full of shit on this topic and is only and has always been ONLY for making sure that any so called reform is merely a vehicle to further line the pockets of these Industries. If he's really cared about health care and not health Industry profits then we'd heard about every Americans right to good affordable Health care and not this BS about Ins.coverage. This guys sucks, his BS about Hope and Change is to be ignored. He's a master Orwellian and were all supposed to buy his twisted BS at face value. Obama is a CORPORATIST pure and simple. He believes in the RIGHT of the top 1% to rule and anything else he barks is just so much window dressing.
Don't want to sound nit-picky, but Congresspersons, like civil servants, don't get healthcare for life. They get a health plan not much different than what most white collar workers in private employment get, and not as good as what many union workers get.
No wonder these guys fight so hard to keep their seats! They're just trying to keep their taxpayer-paid benefits like any other state or Federal worker, while looking down at the rest of us who don't have it.
What Obama did was the reasoning fallacy of the False Dilemma, whereas:
1. Either 1+1 = 4 or 1+1= 12 .
2. It is not the case that 1+1 = 4.
3. Therefore 1+1 = 12.
All the claims are false.
Single payer can't work. Or we cannot afford to scrap private insurance companies. Bullshit.
Oh course we can have single-payer. Oh course private insurers can go hang themselves.
Gary
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
-- Albert Einstein
You'll also notice that he used the term "government run" rather than "single payer" which are two different things. When listening to weasels like Borat Obama, you can have some fun watching how they conflate two different thing to give a false impression in an attempt to manipulate opinion.
We've heard, from Dem supporters, how we were supposed to 'push' Obama to do the right thing once he was elected. It seems apparent by now he won't be pushed anymore so than his predecessor. Attempts at shame or ridicule by articles such as Rothschild's, are, of course, ineffective, since succesful politicians have long had any sense of social accountability beaten out of them. If the US populace truly wants single payer health care, then they will need to literally build it themselves, instead of petitioning the politicos to 'do the right thing'.
These two comments by artas and ardent add some much needed insight.
The movement or argument to "push Obama" was useless in that it had no real power.
It was the idea that the Left could push Obama to the left and still be Democrats--or even still be Obama supporters.
But power doesn't work that way. Not if your objective is truly a progressive one and not merely one of consolidating power.
You can't "push" something if you're still standing on it.
To use the power of leverage effectively you need a place to stand independently of what you're trying to move.
So in order for an independent movement to work, there also has to be the existence of a political power or party independent of the political power you're trying to move.
That's not to say that movements don't have to be independent of political parties. They do. But you need to have BOTH.
Paul Street--who is not a Democrat or quite supportive of Obama--seems to miss that particular important point in his "Notes on Building a Left in the Age of Obama" (link below) In it, he argues: "If you do not loudly distance yourself from Obama and the Democratic Party you help the right and the Establishment media smear the actual left with the corporate Democrats’ failures..."
That's true but then Street also writes:
"Third Party Electoral politics is probably pretty much a dead end right now. This is because of the nature of the U.S. electoral system, which is militantly hostile to third parties. The fix required is on the level of a Constitutional Amendment – a Democracy Amendment that would fundamentally overhaul the nation’s electoral system among other things."
Street's correct that third Party Electoral politics is probably pretty much a dead end right now.
But what he doesn't point out is that the extent of the existence of third party politics is the extent of having any kind of movement that is not an absolute dead end.
In other words, that improbable third party existence--however improbable and unlikely though it may be--is the only thing that is NOT an absolute dead end.
And outside the existence of that third party (really second party!) politics, complaints by Rothschild and "distancing" by Street etc. only amount to mere whining.
And the Left will still take the blame--and to the extent the Left hasn't built an independent party is the extent that it deserves it.
http://www.zcommunications.org/notes-on-building-a-left-in-the-age-of-obama-by-paul-street
Just wait until those who can't afford health insurance now
have to buy it with or without a government subsidy. The coverage undoubtedly will include high deductibles and co-pays. If you can't afford it now how can you afford it then.
Oh wait, I forgot----tax credits.
Isn't it clear by now that Obama is a whore for Big Corporations? No surprise. He also lied when he said in that speech that every idea was on the table and every idea was considered. He kicked single payer, public option, and Medicare for all off the table right from the beginning by negotiating them away in his back-room deals with the insurance companies. Let's kick him right out of the white house--and damn the consequences.
Let's kick him right out of the white house--and damn the consequences."
Now that's a good idea. I'm tired of being a hostage of the two-party party!
My prediction is that the Republicans will run an incredibly scary person in order to call our bluff. I say, Bring it on! Because I don't think voters on the the left or the right will put up with more of this scamming. Look at the polls!
Let's try and make alliances with some of the saner teabaggers. I'm serious.
That's about where I am too. Really the system is hopelessly fucked and I'd rather plant an organic potato with a "teabagger" then send 50 bucks to some Dim or Repig who will just be a war criminal in office, and while I plan to vote Green I know it will accomplish diddly squat and that the actual difference I will make is in encouraging as many people as possible to stop buying things from the company store. Planting a potato is as good a place to start with that as any. If you read sites like infowars.com most of those people are more down with gardens than your average Dimocrap apologist you will read around here like a certain flyer.
"while I plan to vote Green I know it will accomplish diddly squat"
Diddly squat is quite a lot. Voting Green, or third party, fills you with energy. What more could you possibly ask for?
Which is all well and good but once the elation wears off there is still the real political work to do which is organizing against the imperialists outside the system, plating gardens, supporting co-ops, etc.
"...there are some who have suggested scrapping our system of private insurance and replacing it with government-run health care. Though many other countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical nor realistic.”
--------------------
Then why don't you have the CBO score HR 676 and prove to the American people that it's not "practical" or "realistic"?
Or are you using these words to mean CORPORATE APPROVED?!
"government-run health care" there's the slight-of-hand, bait and switch, or whatever you want to call it. We want government-paid health care, not the same as government-run.
WELL SAID!, Cygnus-X1-isaHole.
Unfortunately, most people I've spoken with are moving on from this disasterous exposure of the real Democratic Party leaders on the topic of good health care. The next thing will be the abandonment of the unemployed in favor of more tax cuts and other jibberish. Obama, like Clinton, will bend to the will of his masters; the corporations will reward him handsomely when he retires by warehousing millions of copies of his memoirs in the empty factories and buildings he'll leave behind. " Pocket change we can all believe in will get us on the last bus to nowhere."
It's extremely discouraging if not surprising to hear Obama give his "spectrum analysis" by means of which he poses two extremes between which his position is the alleged "middle ground." In positing single payer as impractical, impossible, not viable etc. etc., he is playing like a musical virtuoso the instrument of the public's limited understanding about the political options available to it. It's as if he USES those "impractical" single payer advocates to stake out a regressive position that really differs only minutely from those of the right-side "extremists" who want to leave health care "as is" under the domination of the insurance and medical care corporations (and of course enhancing that domination by expanding "coverage.")
This tracks back to the role of the handful of "progressive" leaders who provide any counter-weight to the bulk of members of both parties crowded on the rightward side of the see-saw. The agenda of this handful, including many of the "Progressives for Obama," has been sold us (those of us who would buy it) as a matter of progressives "pressuring" Obama to move back to his supposedly leftist side of the scale. This hasn't and won't work because this pressure is not effective in the absence of credible threats that those of his "progressive base" will abandon him he doesn't respond to their demands. They won't do this because most progressives think there is an actual signficant policy difference between a Sarah Palin sitting on the far left of the see-saw and a Barack Obama whom they accept and vote for as the "lesser evil" although there is scarcely a dime's worth of substantive difference. Yet he and the Democratic party depend on that very dime to claim their support from the "progressive base." However "bad" the final version of the health care "reform" bill may be, it is not "as bad" as the tea party anti-governmentalists on the right side of the spectrum would enact if they were in power. So Obama, who was elected because he is "not-Bush" will be re-elected because he is "not Palin" and he and the Democrats can maintain their fallacious claim that they are sitting closer on the see-saw to the real progressive views of most of the American people, on health care and on many issues (like immigration reform) that are yet to be featured in these political charades.
There is not that much difference between “practical” and “realistic” if by both he meant to say politically possible.
Obama is, in reality, nothing more than a Bush blackshirt Republican. His primary interest is in screwing ordinary people.
I believe its quite clear what and who this President is. He has lied time after time, he has yet to live up to his own rhetoric.
His latest lie is about using reconciliation to pass his Insurance and Tax bill, excuse me...Health Care Reform. He said he would never allow that. But then he has violated the Constitution more in one year than even Bush in eight.
Consider he appointed a corrupt piece of manure like Stern to his "debt" council. Corrupt will be the description used for this administration in the history books.
I believe SEAGLASS has a quite succinct summation below.
I said Obama could be the best president ever back when he was campaigning. I meant it as a realistic prediction, that he would be slightly better than FDR, Carter, Kennedy, et. al. Nothing to write home about, but someone to open a few roads in good directions. He seems more determined each week to be a Democrat in the Bill Clinton mold -- using mainly Republican policies with some nice edges on them. It's a good article by Matthew Rothschild. More and more, Obama is using progressive stances as foils to position himself as a moderate, but he's a moderate in the sense of Arlen Specter or Hilary Clinton. Times are too tough, the world is changing too fast, for people to survive this administration relatively unscathed.
Obama is worse than Clinton--much worse.
I'm glad to see this, as *The Progressive* is one of the few left-of-center journals out there that refuses to allow itself to become a blunt-edged tool of the Democratic Party. The thuggish power politics *The Nation* aspires to, the lifestyle porn of *Mother Jones*, the continued slams on Ralph Nader in *In These Times*, and the slavish puffery toward Eric Holder and repeated condemnations of people advocating anything resembling health care reform in *The American Prospect* . . . the left-wing print news media are mostly dead.
I'm glad to see this, as *The Progressive* is one of the few left-of-center journals out there that refuses to allow itself to become a blunt-edged tool of the Democratic Party. The thuggish power politics *The Nation* aspires to, the lifestyle porn of *Mother Jones*, the continued slams on Ralph Nader in *In These Times*, and the slavish puffery toward Eric Holder and repeated condemnations of people advocating anything resembling health care reform in *The American Prospect* . . . the left-wing print news media are mostly dead.
Print news media is almost dead in general. I recommend online sites of socialistworker, counterpunch and globalresearch.ca for more serious articles. Rothschild, although critical of Obama recently, is an apoolgist for the status quo. He does not ask any serious fundamental questions and he gives us superficial articles.
I am "semi-retired", own my own home and vehicle but have no job, income, etc...
What are these Bozo's in D.C. going to tell me? That I now have to go get a job to pay for "sickcare" that won't pay if I get sick anyway???
That sound's like slavery to me and that was outlawed by the 13th Amemdment!
Besides... isn't mandating that individuals buy insurance TAXING them??? Since when do private companies get to tax us?
Where are our "Representatives"?!?!?! Didn't we fight a war over this kind of thing once?!
It is becoming clear to me that the only way to save the country is to end it..
The usa should be spit up into about three countries that are better accountable to the
people.. The current usa is out of control since the coup that put the corporations in power.
There seems to be no way to reign in this bunch of criminals that are running this country.
We are now in what is the worlds largest Ponzi scheme 300 million fools are supporting it with
the thought that it always happens to the other guy.. Well one day they will come for you.
SUPPORT THE EMPIRE SEND YOUR NEIGHBOURS KIDS
Hasn't that been the plan for Iraq all along?
i.e. break it into three or more pieces so that it will be just that much weaker?
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Another story for y'all--
My friend got a "speeding" ticket for going 31 mph in a 30 mph zone in Fla. as did many other motorists by the score from hidden police with radar guns. He appealed to the policeman he was just following the flow of traffic when the light turned green, following the car in front which did not get pulled over. $400 and since he had to go back to NE no way to appeal. Looking at six or seven years of mandated car insurance "surcharge."
Highway robbery, literally.
I live in FL and the same thing happened to me only it was $500, driving into the rising sun which made seeing speedometers on the dash impossible. They hauled us all over.
More highway robbery: right turns on red have been legal in FL forever. To "prevent t-bone crashes from red-light runners" the county commission bought cameras for each intersection. No reduction in t-bones but at _one_ site they charged over 550 people in one day $125 each for right turns on red--because they didn't make a complete stop behind the wide white line.
Insurance companies will now have money from my unemployed healthy wife who has not had insurance since she left her teaching job 14 months ago. The insurance she did have back then never paid anything anyway.
It's fascist.
I live in FL and the same thing happened to me only it was $500, driving into the rising sun which made seeing speedometers on the dash impossible. They hauled us all over.
More highway robbery: right turns on red have been legal in FL forever. To "prevent t-bone crashes from red-light runners" the county commission bought cameras for each intersection. No reduction in t-bones but at _one_ site they charged over 550 people in one day $125 each for right turns on red--because they didn't make a complete stop behind the wide white line.
Insurance companies will now have money from my unemployed healthy wife who has not had insurance since she left her teaching job 14 months ago. The insurance she did have back then never paid anything anyway.
It's fascist.
The advocates of Obamacare have made their bed as protectors of private for profit Health Insurance who they will enrich with a government imposed mandate. Let them lie in that stinking fetid mess along with all the filthy lucre they will collect. They will find that the mandate is even more odious for the public than a payroll tax which Single Payer would impose. They will be unmercifully attacked by the right for imposing "government run health care", the very moniker they use against us now. Inadvertently they have left us an opening as Single Payer Advocates. Do you want real Health Reform without enriching these private Health Care vultures, we have a third way. It will increase payroll taxes but end up costing you less because it will relieve you all your existing employee contributions, co-pays and deductibles and it will provide a single high standard of care for all. Do you want to get those leaches off your back? Single Payer will clean out this fetid mess and push both the corrupt politicians and Health care executives who they have collaborated with out of their stinking nest. I think it might play well and if it succeeds in just a few places the rest will follow.
"Though many other countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical nor realistic.”
Because it would piss off your corporate "owners", maybe? This guy has GOT TO GO!
David Swanson told me that he has been after Kucinich to leave the Dems and go to the Greens and take the Left with him; however, he said he is, basically, losing his voice trying. I didn't ask why D.K. is so adamant about remaining in that party.
If D.K. runs against O'bummer for 2012, I will once again do all I can to help but it will be the last time if history repeats.
Yeah. When I read that "...neither practical...", I was thinking "yeah, not with a limpdick like YOU for prez."
D.K. is a brave & honorable man with integrity. If he runs, I WANT him to wear a helmet & flak-vest, & stay in the bunker for the duration (no JFK moments). He' ll "slay" the wallstreet beast... and they'll come after him constantly (with their hitmen).
"Gov't Run" will work, when we make the gov't OUR gov't once again (like Lincoln said: of/by/for the people).It's coming.
Not only that, but Obama kept complaing that "everything that could be said about healthcare has been said" when single-payer wasn't even allowed to be part of the discussion.
No one ever challenges this jerk.
Just us Progressives and you can see where that is going...and going...and....
The Oval Office as Business Roundtable Headquarters.
Let's be clear here. What Canada has is NOT government run - it is government (i.e., publically) PAID for. That's a huge difference. I would not trust most governments - and certainly not the U.S. government - to run the heatlh care system. But the U.S., of all countries, should be able to pay for the health care of its citizens (and others - after all, Canada pays for my health care and I'm American).
Given the incomprehensible amount of money the U.S. government throws at banks, brokers, and warlords, it should easily be able to pay for a simple thing like a health care bill for its people.
But let's keep our definitions straight here. If we are talking about "single payer" or "Medicare for All" (a Canadian like system) than we mean government COVERED not government RUN health care.
Thank you!
Although, in the case of the UK, the government does run the health care system, and does a fairly good job at it.
Maybe they do a good job because government employees in the UK aren't slacking off on the internet all afternoon at work.
phoenix20
Great analogy! What a picture.
Remember the question/answer: How do you know when a politician is lying? When he or she is speaking. The problem remains not only with politicians (professional "prostitutes", liars and deceits) but with the public at large who have largely forfeited their ability to think (logically, rationally, and critically) for themselves rather than allowing others to tell them how, what,and when to think (which is the goal from Fox News, the pulpit and maybe NCLB-program them early?).
Shame on us (the public) for falling for the same old sh*t again and again and again regardless how it is "packaged" to appeal to our (emotionally charged) beliefs which we want reinforced not challeged-f*ck facts (more so when these pesky facts conflict with our cherished beliefs). Who asked themselves "what did Obama mean by "change". We projected onto him the change we hoped he meant coupled with his manipulation of us. "When will we ever learn...?"
Isn't "lovely" that we convey to our children such ideals as "speak the truth" (never lie) and learn as we grow older that adults lie a lot and politicians and other role models (say many religious "leaders") raise hypocrisy and lying to an "art form"?
We tell our children not to hit others and we, as a country, commit ourselves to endless wars killing children, women and men while lying out both sides of our mouths to justify our actions (fighting terrorism with terrorism).
We threaten our children with consequences for their actions (arresting a child for scribbling on a desktop) while those who perpetuate world wide violence in all its forms (from the denial of healthy food, clean water, affordable comprehensive health care...etc) as well as those who commit war crimes against humanity are rewarded handsomely with near absolute impunity. What,in so many God-fearing people, perpetuates this massive commitment to the wanton violence and destruction of human life and other life forms so rampant over millenia (and showing precious few signs of abating-talk radio and the pulpit anyone)?
If we, as a nation, want to step towards a modicum of honesty and truthfulness should we not have a very modest change in the Pledge of Allegiance such as "I pledge allegiance to the United Corporations of America and to the maximization of our profits on the backs of the poor and disappearing middle class..." or "I pledge allegiance to the United Theocracy of America and to achieving Armageddon and the destruction of all life on the planet as soon as heavenly possible..."
As for the single payer option and health care reform, all smoke and mirrors as usual. In the end that is where the public experiences it.
OPoser's "neither practical nor realistic" sounds sooo much more professorial than repeating the Business Roundtable's "uniquely American solution" or paraphrasing Durbin's "Franky they own the place."
Let's get the Congressional Budget Office to work up all the savings that would result from having government replace private insurance in a universal healthcare system, and then ask voters if they think it's practical.
Pitchfork, when I read appeals like your own for the CBO to "work up the savings" on single payer, I think to myself, and now I'll say it out loud. Why do we have to wait for a CBO assessment, which apparently is not going to happen absent an authoritative congressional request? Hasn't some economist think-tank associated with single payer made any such assessments; and why haven't they been publicized? Maybe these have been done and I just haven't seen them. The CBO is not god almighty but simply a collection of economists themselves, why aren't single payer advocates doing it for themselves rather than relying on generalized assertions (which I believe) that single payer will save a huge amount of money?
We don't have to wait for a CBO assessment. I point out the dishonesty that congress has not written this option up to compare it for the purpose of legislation.It would take a very comprehensive study to accurately count all the savings of universal care. Under the existing system, there are expenses like worker's compensation and the premium for medical coverage in car insurance, or the existing programs like veteran's care--people are more likely to think of the cost and not appreciate all the offsetting savings.
pnhp.org has some estimates about the cost of the existing system and what single payer could save. A few factoids from their site:
The US could save as much as $350 Billion a year going single payer.
Private insurers take 31 cents of every healthcare dollar spent.
We pay twice what nations with healthcare spend to cover everybody. We pay twice and yet have only very partial coverage.
Taxes are already paying 60% of healthcare coverage. As Kucinich said, we're already paying for universal healthcare; we're just not getting it.
Yeah Obama is a flaming shitweasel and his hackneyed, pseudo-analysis of the spectrum of opinion on health care is literally dripping with cold, oily, self-serving dishonesty. Is anybody stupid enough to believe this false dichotomy (don't answer that...)? could a Harvard consitutional lawyer be that stupid?
But let's face it - Obama is merely the artifact, the symptom, the latest vapid, virtueless, valueless parasite to crawl to the surface of the scum pond of American poltics. For some perverse reason, we citizens tolerate this. That's the real heartbreak, no matter how "reprehensible" Obama may be.
I thought you were going somewhere else after your first paragraph. Obama CAN'T be that stupid. And yet he's going down the exact same path as someone (Bush) who WAS that stupid. That tells me Obama's a good guy being forced down a path, the same path Bush went down willingly.
Does that make me an Obama apologist? Sort of. I think I'm just not so naive to think all actions a president (any president) makes are his own, so to speak. Then again, maybe I've watched the Godfather too many times.
Once again uncle O'Tomma has proven himself to be a slick talking "house negro" that identifies with the intrerests of the wealthy white masters who run the plantation.
Malcolm X described the difference between the figurative "field negroes" and the "house negroes" very well and Mumia Abu Jamal pegged Obama as a "house negro" very soon after he was elected.
"There was two kind of slaves. There was the house negro and the field negro. The house negro, they lived in the house, with master. They dressed pretty good. They ate good, cause they ate his food, what he left. [...] They would give their life to save their masters house quicker than their master would. The house negro, if the master said "we got a good house here" the house negro say "yeah, we got a good house here".
Whenever the master said we, he'd say we. That's how you can tell a house negro. If the master's house caught on fire, the house negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house negro would say "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than the master identified with himself..."
Malcolm X
So tell me...was the "house negro" like that because he was different from the "field negro" or thought himself better than the field negro? Or was it because the house negro was also tortured into acting like that, just like the field negro? (And torture can come in many forms in the context we're talking about...it might have been threats to send the house negro out in the fields, it could have been sexual threats, etc.)
My point is, Malcom X certainly had an interesting story to make his point. Doesn't mean it's true, just that he fit it to his cause. In the same way, like my comment above, it may just be that Obama is being forced along a path. Now I certainly wish that if this is the case, he'd be stronger, like an FDR or LBJ, and fight back hard. Maybe he just made the personal calculation that the middle road was the way he'd go.