Ruminations of an Expatriate

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Wednesday, July 1st, 2009...7:39 pm

Ain’t It Nice To Have A Coherent, Informed President

An excerpt from the transcript of a town hall meeting President Obama conducted in Annandale, VA.

Q Hi, Mr. President. I’m a member of SEIU and I’m down here in Fairfax County working on Change That Works. What can I do, as a member of the union, to help you with your reform bill?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate the question. The most important thing I think the American people can do right now is to just be informed. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors to get informed about what’s happening in the health care system right now. It’s very complicated and I don’t expect everybody to be an expert, but I want everybody to be well enough informed that the scare tactics of those who would oppose reform don’t work.

So when you hear somebody say this is — “Obama is proposing a government takeover of health care” — that’s an old argument that’s been used for years. I just want to be clear. If you’ve got a health care plan that you get through your employer or some other private plan, I want you to keep it. I actually think reforming the system is the most likely way for you to keep the health care that you’ve got. I don’t want to take it over. I think it’s great that you can keep the care that you’ve got.

All I’ve said is I want to make sure that those things that taxpayers are paying for, that we’re getting our money’s worth. I don’t want to provide $177 billion in subsidies to insurance companies. I don’t want to reimburse for five tests when the evidence shows that you just getting one test is going to be better for you because that means that the taxpayers are saving money and I can use that to lower your costs, or to help somebody who doesn’t have health care at all.

I do think we should have a public plan to compete with the private plans. But these private insurance companies, they’re always telling me what a great deal that they give to the American consumer; if it’s such a great deal, why are they worried about competing against the public plan, especially when they say government can’t do anything? (Applause.) [Bold emphasis added].

So they’ll tell you that we’re trying to take over health care. I don’t want to take over health care.

They’ll tell you that we’re going to try to ration the system. We don’t want to get between you and your doctor. What we do believe is that if there’s good evidence out there that shows that the best way to treat your illness is to give you the blue pill, and instead right now you’re getting prescribed the red pill that costs twice as much, I think that you and your doctor, having that information, are probably going to decide to go with the cheaper pill that does just as good of a job, and that will save you money. That’s not rationing. That’s being sensible.

So whenever you start hearing these arguments about socialized medicine, government takeover, rationing, Canada-style health care, what I need you to do — and I need everybody here to do and everybody who’s watching to do — is to actually pay attention to the argument, and don’t let people scare you out of reforming a system that we know is not working.

America — one of the great things about this country is we’ve got a system that’s sometimes kind of hard to change. Congress gets kind of bogged down, and part of that is because of the way the Constitution is designed — it’s served us well because it keeps us very stable. We don’t have coups and all kinds of governments collapsing all the time. But the disadvantage sometimes is, is that it’s hard for us to make big, bold steps. But the great thing about the system is that, every once in a while, when we finally hit a point where things just aren’t working at all, we are able to generate the political will to finally get things done.

That’s how we got Social Security. After the Great Depression, nobody had any pensions or protection, and people started realizing, we can’t have a country where suddenly older Americans are just on the streets, after working hard all their lives. And finally we got Social Security. And then people said, well, we can’t have older Americans who don’t have any health care, and we got Medicare. At every juncture, when we finally need to make a change, we make a change. This is one of those times.

So don’t be scared about the future. Let’s embrace the future. Let’s go after the future. If we do, then I’m confident that we can create a health care system that gives you choice, allows you to keep your doctor, drives down costs, makes sure that every American doesn’t have to worry if they lose or change their jobs. That’s our aim. That’s our goal. We’re going to make it happen this year.

Thank you, everybody. I appreciate you. Thank you. (Applause.)

Incurious George, demonstrably, is incapable of understanding either the forest or remembering the names of the trees in the forest. President Clinton is able to remember the name of every tree in the forest, but doesn’t seem to quite understand the forest as a whole. Obama is able to understand the forest and remember the name of every tree in the forest.

It is all quite remarkable, and refreshing.

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