Reinstated: Pres. Obama: “Public Option” Health Care Is Trojan Horse for Single Payer
Video suspended for suspect credibility. Please see explanation in my reply to Timmy C’s comment.
This is the Count, and I’m hijacking the Duke’s thread. After viewing Timmy’s comments, I’ve decided to reinstate this video. If nothing else, the idea that President Obama would like to use the Public Option as a way of getting this country to a single payer health care system is in the words of Howard Dean “an interesting theory“. As such it should be up for discussion, which may or may not result in rebuttal. I will not be intimidated into taking it down, nor will I remove it out of some misguided and naive notion of fairness which the Democrats have no intention of honoring themselves.
To wit:
Don’t like it? Get a thrill up your leg an inform on me at flag@whitehouse.gov.
In brief, after perusing Timmy’s links below, I feel that this video is fair enough in it’s points and it is once again Timmy who is credulous as to Democratic talking points.
The argument for single-payer is pretty good and worth having- why not just skip to that instead of pretending that’s not the ultimate goal? More later— The Count
This week the White House web site is asking for people to report friends and neighbors who oppose the gov’t take over of health care.
Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House Health Reform Office, is asking Americans to watch their personal emails — even “casual conversation” — in order to INFORM THE WHITE HOUSE OF ANYTHING “FISHY” being said about ObamaCare!
Here’s the quote:
Since we can’t keep track of all of [the disinformation]
here at the White House, we’re asking for your
help. If you get an email or see something on the web
about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it
to flag@whitehouse.gov.
People being asked to report their friends and neighbors if their e-mails are critical of Obama?!! WTF !!!!????
And a few weeks ago, the prez said if we already have private insurance we like, we can keep it. 2 days later the White House press secretary said we “shouldn’t take the President’s words literally.”
I don’t know why anyone believes ANYthing that comes out of the man’s mouth.
Fascism is coming. And the sheep are too F-ing stupid to notice.
One of my general rules sniffing out propaganda videos (of any leaning) is that they don’t include full sentences in their quotes. When you get sentence fragments as “proof” something 99 times out of 100 it’s propaganda and usually bad propaganda.
This clip is no different. Factcheck.org covered this:
http://m.factcheck.org/2009/08/white-house-fact-checking/
That had nothing to do with single payer. But the vid made you think it did.
And yes the snippet from 2003 shows Obama talking up single payer THEN, but for the life of me I can’t find anything more than that one snippet out of context from the speech.
Politifact tracked down two folks from the event, both single payer fans who say that Barack in 2003 was for single payer, but that his position has modified since.
(to their chagrin):
Assuming he had modified his views on single payer’s feasibility since 2003…Everything he’s said for the last 6 years has consistently been along these lines:
His current plan is not a “stealth single payer,” it’s fix what we have now. People need relief from an overpriced broken system now. 40 something million of us need coverage now.
Save the battle over single payer for after you fix THIS.
Well, Tim, as always you come armed to the teeth with data. I still think that even what you quote Obama as saying means that the end game is for Washington to fund (which in reality always = control, despite Pres. Obama’s foolish implication otherwise) all Americans’ health care, which I think would be a disaster in the U.S. Nevertheless, I hate propaganda that takes quotes out of context. The other two people in the video are not taken out of context, but I didn’t vet the Obama clips properly and you make a case. So, therefore I’m suspending the video unless and until further investigation changes my mind.
The previous video of Frank stays, as it clearly represents his viewpoint and his agenda — which agenda is not insignificant no matter what one believes or disbelieves about Obama’s position, don’t you think?
Thanks for the challenge.
Duke:
Thanks for the removal of the video, it was pretty misleading…and when you look at what they edited out, it was clearly intentionally so….and it’s to your integrity and credit to pull it down.
But it’s a good and timely discussion to be had.
If as you suspect government always wants to be “bigger” I’d suggest that private industry always wants government to be zero (as they don’t want any restraints) and wisdom is found in divining where in between those two extremes the common good is best served.
To me a good end state would be similar to what we have now with education: everyone in the country is covered, and public and private schools compete…and the competition between those schools keeps both in line and makes both better.
Insurance plans could work exactly the same way, but in this case flipped to what is now true with schools… in this case with the vast majority of folks in the private insurance camp, and a smaller subgroup voluntarily opting into the public option. And both compete, leading to higher quality, lower costs.
To me that is a good end state and is all that Obama is recommending. Beyond that single payer is another battle for another day.
I do agree that the Barney Frank video wasn’t taken out of context though…You listed two possibilities:
From my view the answer is A. But their belief that transitioning to a single payer solution isn’t “hidden.”
John Conyers has issued multiple bills (that never made out of committee) for just that. Frank is a co-sponsor of these as he said. For this group, Obama’s plan is way shy of what they think should exist, but many of them are willing to settle for it and not make the good the enemy of the best.
To Frank’s comment that the public option could “lead” to single payer: Wasn’t his argument that it would only do that if the public option “demonstrated it’s strength and power”?
In other words: If the public option is as misguided an idea as most conservatives claim, then it would NOT demonstrate such efficacy, and thus not lead to any separate discussions of a future single payer system, no?
That said: I predict that Obama is not as religious about the “public option” as folks paint him. He wants a feature to lower health care costs and provide competition…if it can be shown that co-ops, or some for of pubic/private super-co-ops can do that, I think you’ll find him more flexible on that than many liberals wish him to be. So far there has been little evidence that a co-op system could really do that. But we’ll see what the senate bill comes up with.
My take on the whole health care business. Serious question and proposal for Timmy C at the end…
(1) The idea to take health care people are happy with AWAY from 90 million Americans so that 11 million can have it is sheer lunacy.
(2) Our system is the best in the world. People from England, Canada, etc.come HERE for their health care. That includes my wife’s family, who sometimes experiences delays in the Canadian system. Weeks for an MRI. Stuff like that.
(3) The reality is that some people, mostly the younger crowd, early 20’s, don’t WANT health care. They don’t want to pay for it. It may or may not be wise, but it’s their right. In my 20’s I didn’t pay for health care for about4 years. I’m no worse off for it.
(4) Government is the reason the system is expensive now. Through their constant meddling and telling doctors and insurance companies what they can and cannot do, they’ve made it more inefficient and more expensive. Example, when the gov’t tells doctors they’ll pay 40% (or whatever) of a particular bill, doctors can raise their rates cuz they know the feds are covering part of it.
(5) Principle. I agree on one level that everyone should have health care. It’s the compassionate, right thing to do. I think that’s where God’s heart is. That said, what gives someone across the county or across town whom I don’t even know the right to DEMAND that I pay for their health care? Whatever happened to freedom and personal responsibility? Forced charity is not charity.
(6) Which leads to this- why don’t we run health insurance the same way we do car insurance? I haven’t heard anyone suggest this, but I’ve been saying it for years. We all have car insurance, but we all pay for our own gasoline, oil changes, tires, break jobs, etc. We pay for our own basic repairs and maintenance as we go along. Car insurance is only for catastrophes, the big wrecks. Why don’t we do health insurance the same way..??? Someone help me figure this out… If we all paid for our own basic care, and had insurance only for when we got cancer or whatever… that seems to me the most logical solution in the world.
Sadly, I don’t think that would appeal to either political party, because it reduces their power, and increases personal power.
Timmy, O always says he’s open to new and better ideas. I’d LOVE to have you present him with my car insurance idea. I mean, THAT could work. Couldn’t it?
Mike:
First: you greatly over-estimate my ability to get things in front of the President…but thanks.
Second:
Totally agree with you that a system that allows everyone to be fairly cared for by doctors would be in keeping with God’s character, who sent Jesus as a Great Physician and compels the faithful to care for the sick, saying “I was sick and you cared for me.”
I’d also suggest further that the current system is immoral in a few ways. Steve Waldman at Beliefnet nailed it when he wrote:
And I agree with your idea that insurance for health should be more like other insurance such as automobile insurance in many ways.
But one key note: If by “just like car insurance” you mean:
…Then THAT does describe the current 2 bills agreed to in the House, and rumored to be what the Senate would come up with.
ONE BIG NOTE:
Now “just like car insurance does” the plans do include an individual mandate that everyone must buy this insurance. (something like 48 or 49 states legally require individuals to buy car insurance) so when you pay your taxes you would also show proof of insurance.
But if you were a true libertarian who didn’t want to be forced to have insurance, you could pay a fee instead. This fee would go to help cover the costs that these uninsured folks incur when they go to emergency rooms without insurance, etc…
Why have a mandate for individuals? There is an estimated cost of $1,100 per year or more that you and I and every other insured person pay for the uninsured to cover their visits to emergency rooms, etc… To make the system work for everybody you have to require everybody in, or if they don’t want to, they need to pay a fee to cover their costs they are responsible for that flow over to everyone else.
The controversial bits that aren’t settled yet in Congress:
My bet: we end up with either a super-coop or a relatively weakened public option. Perhaps a weakened employer mandate, and something close to the coverage for the poor.
But even then (assuming I’m correct) it would be an AMAZING step forward in reform of what was a deeply broken system literally killing working Americans — literally and figuratively — needlessly.
So what Obama may achieve is actually very much like your suggestion Mike.
More grist for the mill. You (Duke, Count or Toay) may be suspicious of the President when he makes such statements, but this is pretty categorical denial of single payer for the US, spoken while standing next to the Canadian prime minster today:
My comments at the top of the post- reinstated.
MASH, Pamela Geller, Internet Snitch Brigade (flag@whitehouse.gov), and Anti-American Activities
http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2009/08/mash-pamela-geller-internet-snitch.html
On August 4, 2009 a post titled “Facts Are Stubborn Things” appeared on the White House blog. It contained the following paragraph:
Every Fourth of July, we celebrate the Birth of the Nation. Every Fourth of August, we shall celebrate the Birth of the Internet Snitch Brigade.
How long do you think it took before the Internet Snitch Brigade expanded its reporting from something fishy about health insurance reform to Anti-American Activities? Just five days! Move over McCarthy; here comes Bill Warner. In the post titled “ASSASSINATE BARACK OBAMA PLOTS INCREASE TO 10 RACIST RIGHT WING BLOGGERS FUEL WHITE SUPREMISTS (sic.) SECRET SERVICE SHUT EM DOWN by Bill Warner investigator” Bill Warner writes:
Yes, it only took five days to jump from snitching about dissent on health insurance reform to making up wild accusations about “incitement to hate by others and the possible murder of President Barack Obama.” A quote attributed to Joseph Goebbels, a Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany reads:
Bill Warner may not be a good P.I. (as he claims to be) or not a good bar fighter and martial artist (as he claims to be), but he certainly mastered the art of Nazi propaganda.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YjI0N2E5ZjM0MGU0ZWVkZTdmYTBjNDQ4YTM4YTgzODA=
Liberals always think the problem with Socialism is that they just haven’t had the right people running it. They completely discount human nature.
Bottom line here- the libs are about increasing their POWER. And they are lying about what will happen with state controlled health care.
To whit:
Oregon’s state-run health care plan won’t cover a new drug that could extend her life — which is, after all, the entire point of health insurance and health care — but will gladly pay the bill if she decides to stop costing the state more money.
This was entirely predictable. When the state assumes the cost for the personal and private functions of its citizens, the private and personal become public, and the limits of government disappear.
You want to extend your life an extra couple of years? Sorry. You can’t generate enough revenue to cover the cost of treatment, so the state won’t allow it. If you’d be so kind as to drop dead now, though, that will save some money for some twisted lib-tard’s sex-change operation.
In this case, fortunately, Wagner got rescued from her own state government. Who played the hero? The EVIL pharmaceutical company that produces the drug she needs. They gave it to her for free out of disgust.