Obama Care Emerges

The president has been floating ideas in the public for some time now, last night he released some actual details of his plan to Senator Max Baucus and Senator Kennedy. Two men who differing versions of what health care would look like, the most important information is that Obama is now open to forcing people to buy health insurance. One of the misnomers of people without insurance is that none of them can't afford it. In reality there are millions of people, so called "invincible" who don't pay for health insurance and use their money for things. They simply risk bankruptcy in case of catastrophic health care issues. Of course during the campaign Obama opposed such measures :

Asked whether Obama would prefer mandates but thinks his plan is more palatable to the American people and more likely to gain Congressional approval, his campaign responded: “Obama strongly believes that meaningful cost reduction measures must take effect before a federal individual health insurance mandate can be considered.”

Typical lie of course considering how Obama excoriated McCain over taxing health benefits, as for cost reductions, the president has been peddling imaginary savings as a talking point for some time now. Basically through electronic records, better treatment, and preventive care he will create hundreds of billions perhaps trillions in savings. These claims are as real as his claims of saving jobs.

The president said he was open to proposals for “shared responsibility — making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and asking that employers share in the cost.”He did not use the terms “individual mandate” and “employer mandate,” which suggest a degree of coercion that Democrats try to avoid implying. Still, the letter provides the fullest statement of Mr. Obama’s views on proposals at the heart of legislation to cover all Americans, his top domestic priority.

“If we are going to make people responsible for owning health insurance, we must make health care affordable,” Mr. Obama wrote. “If we do end up with a system where people are responsible for their own insurance, we need to provide a hardship waiver to exempt Americans who cannot afford it.”

Moreover, the president said, “while I believe that employers have a responsibility to support health insurance for their employees, small businesses face a number of special challenges in affording health benefits and should be exempted.”

To help pay for coverage of the uninsured, Mr. Obama called on Congress to squeeze $200 billion to $300 billion from Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years, on top of the $309 billion in savings he proposed in his budget. Such cutbacks are sure to face resistance from health care providers who would be affected.

600 billion in imaginary savings, by the way good luck with cutting 200 to 300 billion from Medicare and Medicaid. You can reduce benefits, or pay doctors and hospitals less. Considering the doctor shortages we are experiencing that would be a disaster.

Administration officials said the letter reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s views since the election last year. In the presidential primaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton supported requiring everyone to carry insurance. But Mr. Obama said then that the requirement for coverage should at first apply only to children.

The idea of a child-only mandate has not found significant support in Congress, where Democrats favor an individual mandate, with federal subsidies or tax credits to help defray the cost of insurance for people with low or moderate incomes.The waiver proposed by Mr. Obama is similar to that in Massachusetts, which requires all adults to have health insurance but offers exemptions to people considered unable to afford it.

This year, for instance, Massachusetts considers a premium of $232 a month to be affordable for a family with annual income of $45,781 to $54,936. If residents in that income range cannot obtain a premium that low, either through an employer or in the individual insurance market, they qualify for a waiver. In 2007, the plan’s first year of operation, about 76,000 Massachusetts residents were so qualified.

By evolution they mean he lied on the campaign trail. But lie is an ugly word, play into the myth that he is genius who thought about and contemplated the issue, doesn't that sound much better. Anyway the Massachusetts model did get people health insurance, but also led to waiting lists and more expensive health care coverage So far the public plan is unknown, but outlines suggest it will be households making less then 88,000 dollars and will allegedly be different then Medicare and Medicaid in regards to how they pay doctors and hospitals for treatment.

Even then, the Blue Dogs said, the public insurance plan must not be a replica of Medicare, the government-run health program for older Americans; must not use Medicare rates to pay doctors and hospitals; and “must adhere to the same rules and regulations” as private insurers.

“No one knows what the public option will or will not be able to achieve,” said Representative Mike Ross of Arkansas, a Blue Dog leader. “Frankly, it’s an experiment. We cannot create a public option that stacks the deck against a system that currently provides coverage to more than 160 million Americans.”

Mr. Obama said he was “committed to working with the Congress to fully offset the cost of health care reform,” by curbing the growth of Medicare and Medicaid and “by enacting appropriate proposals to generate additional revenues.”

We have the makings of a Health Care shibboleth that is going to jam up health care for years to come and add to the growing fiscal woes of this nation. Final thought, if Obama lied about his health care plans during the campaign, why should we believe his plans and cost savings promises now?