Obama's NY Times Op-ed

[SoFlaJet]

Why We Need Health Care Reform By BARACK OBAMA
Published: August 15, 2009

OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.

more here..

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/opinion/16obama.html?_r=1

[bemildred]

1. Damn, that is so articulate.

I'm just not used to this level of coherence and rhetorical force in our political discourse.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. This alone is worth fighting for.

"We will put an end to these practices. Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick."

[many a good man]

6. Those four elements ARE significant reform

1) NO MORE denial of coverage for preexisting conditions
2) NO MORE dropping coverage when you get sick
3) NO MORE caps on yearly or lifetime coverage received
4) NO MORE limitless co-pays and deductibles

These changes will substantially help millions of Americans but I fail to see how it will lower costs and make it affordable for everyone. In fact, these changes are going to make a huge dent in the profitability of insurance companies so they are going find some other way to squeeze to make up for it and there isn't much we can do about it - until the next reform wave comes around.

Half a loaf is better than none, but if you have two gaping holes in your ship you need to fix both or your ship is still going to sink.

[Doctor_J]

9. 14,000 per day will still lose their coverage

Insurance companies will still be free to raise rates as they wish (my institutional premiums went up 50% this year, forcing me to an HMO). Prices and profits still going up, coverage and coverees still going down.

This is significant reform?

No wonder the public now trusts the fascists more than the Dems on this issue.

[Doctor_J]

3. Strange. Published the day before it was announced he's caving in

and giving up on any meaningful reform. THis is really, truly a fucked up country.

[stray cat]

4. No just a screwed up melodramatic public on both the right and the left

[SoFlaJet]

5. hey Doc

you don't really believe they are caving do you? There's a LOT of misinformation being flung around out there now.

[kelly1mm]

7. I believe they are caving. A co-op as the public option? Not to me. NT

[Doctor_J]

8. Single payor to public option to co-ops

All because of few psychotic Limbeciles broke up constituent meetings.

What would you call it, if not caving?

[depakid]

10. Why his speechwriters can't get their facts straight is beyond me

Estimates in peer reviewed publications are now 52 MILLION PLUS uninsured by 2010. Over 6 million more Americans than the older numbers.

Kinda shows a disturbing trend, eh?

[Doctor_J]

11. When it gets to 60 million or so,

maybe those 60 million plus those of us who want help can start buring hate radio stations to the ground and get the debate back on topic.

[MannyGoldstein]

12. Oh Please

If it's so important, then why didn't he take an honest crack at it? He's the most convincing orator in a generation. If he cared nearly as much about helping people as he cared about getting elected, we'd be on the threshold of something good. Instead, we'll have subsidies to health insurance CEOs, presumably because it's not fair to only gift our tax dollars to bankers.