Why Is Barack Obama Writing GOP Talking Points?

If you want to know where conservatives in Congress get all their
ridiculous talking points about how dysfunctional the federal
government is, how incapable the public sector is when it comes to
doing anything right and, above all, how worthless federal employees
are, we've tracked down the source.

It's not Rush Limbaugh.

It's not Michael Steele.

It's Barack Obama.

The president, who was once an ardent advocate for repairing are
broken health care system by developing a single-payer "Medicare for
All" program, now rejects the wisdom he expressed before moving to
Washington.

As recently as 2003, Obama told an AFL-CIO gathering in Illinois:
"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care
program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the
wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of
its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health
insurance to everybody. And that's what (another speaker) is talking
about when he says everybody in, nobody out -- single payer health care
plan, a universal health care plan."

Yet, after excluding single-payer advocates from his health care summit,
the president explicitly rejected the option when he delivered a March
3 speech pressing for final action to enact some sort of health care
reform.

Just as his speech dismissed "Party of No" Republicans who want to
"loosen regulations on the insurance companies," Obama took a swipe at
the real reformers with whom he once stood in solidarity.

"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," the president declared. "Though many other
countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical
nor realistic."

The president is wrong about what is practical or realistic.

Those "other countries" he mentions are industrialized democracies
that budget analysts and physicians have long argued that, by expanding
access to care while cutting costs, a "Medicare for All" plan would
improve the competitive position of U.S. industries in global markets.

But the president is even more wrong to dismiss a single-payer
response as unworkable because of some supposed flaw in the DNA of the
public employees who would implement real reform.

"I don't believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance
company bureaucrats more control over health care in America," declared
Obama.

So the president is equating career civil servants - like the folks
who organize the military's health care, services for veterans, the
existing Medicare and Medicaid programs, the Indian Health Services and
the care provided for the president and his family - with insurance
company profiteers who refuse coverage to people with preexisting
conditions, discriminate against women and the elderly in establishing
pricing structures and connive to deny care to Americans when they need
it most.

My friend Matt Rothschild, the able editor of The Progressive magazine, describes Obama's statement as "reprehensible rhetoric." It is difficult to disagree.

But what Obama's flawed calculus does is even more damaging than his word choice.

By suggesting that "government bureaucrats" are no better than
"insurance company bureaucrats," the president reinforces everything
his Republican critics are saying. Republicans in the House and Senate
argue that a "government takeover of health care" would not do a thing
to expand quality of care or to reduce costs.

With his inept comparison, Obama says pretty much the same thing.

In effect, he is writing the GOP's talking points.

The U.S. needs a new health care system, to be sure.

But, even more urgently, Obama needs a new speechwriter.