President Obama speaks to Congress about health care reform
President Obama has finally made his much anticipated speech before a joint session of Congress, in an attempt to address health care reform and the partisan bickering that has been so prevalent in the last several weeks. As I watched the live feed of the speech on CNN’s website, I was struck by one thing in particular. It didn’t take much for Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and the rest of the Democrats to jump to their feet and applaud wildly and they spent much of their time grinning from ear to ear. As for the Republicans, they seemed much too busy holding up signs asking the President “what bill?” and they certainly were not interested in standing to their feet and clapping.
The President’s speech was much too long to go into all of the details on this blog. He didn’t go into a lot of specifics, but instead outlined several broad proposals that he would like to see included in any legislation that might find it’s way to his desk. While a lot of Republicans would have liked to see him back completely away from the idea of a public health care option, he did not. He did say his main reason for wanting such an option was to provide Americans with choices and the insurance companies with competition and made it clear that he would be open to other ideas that would meet those same goals.
President Obama also declared his support for a mandate that all Americans purchase health care insurance, but nothing was mentioned about the fines Democratic Senator Max Baucus has proposed. He has made his opposition to those fines known before and I hope he will stand by that position.
One of the main things the President attempted to do with this speech was to counter some of the rumors and innuendos that have been going around about the legislation that may come out of Congress. He specifically said the rumor that there will be bureaucratic panels that will decide who will get health care and who will not is a flat out lie. He also said that illegal immigrants would not be covered under his proposal and abortions would not be paid for by federal dollars.
Throughout the speech, it was very apparent that the issue is still just as decisive as it has been all summer long. For the present, nothing has changed and it may be several days before we will see if there is any movement towards a bipartisan solution to the problem of health care reform. I believe the President did a fairly good job at putting his stamp on health care reform and at letting Congress and the American people know what it is that he expects to see in the legislation, once it reaches his desk. To be honest, I do not hold out much hope that both sides of the political spectrum will be able to come together and produce health care legislation that will be meaningful to the American people.
If you have been reading my blog for very long at all, you will know that I am no fan of the President. I did not vote for him because I take issue with a lot of his policies. That being said, not all of his ideas and policies are bad. Instead of listening to sound bytes of the speech, read it for yourself. The New York Times has a text of the entire speech. As for the proposals the President outlined during the speech, CNN has a pdf file of those proposals that can be downloaded and read at your own leisure. I urge you to do both. Do not take my word for anything. Do not take the word of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or any other conservative commentator. Do not take the word of the major news organizations, be it CNN, ABC, MSNBC, or FOX News. This issue is much too important to relegate it to a few words from either side. If the American people can get past the rhetoric and become engaged in the debate, something good may come of it. If we all stick to the yelling and screaming, then nothing will be accomplished except to retain the status quo.
